Dangerous is the Vexed God
by MaggieMerc
Summary: Emma Swan just wants to adjust to life in a post-Curse Storybrooke. She wants to get to know her kid. Get to know her parents. And maybe learn how to use her magic. But the town has an epidemic of flying monkeys, there's a drunk pirate walking down Main half naked, Regina Mills keeps looking at her like she's seen her naked, and, oh yeah, someone's killing off fairy godmothers.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Dangerous is the Vexed God (1/?)

**Author:** Maggiemerc

**Rating: **M

**Spoilers**: Veers from canon after the third episode of season 2.

**Disclaimer**: Of course I don't own them. All the lady loving would be hella canon if I did.

**Summary: **Emma Swan just wants to adjust to life in a post-Curse Storybrooke. She wants to get to know her kid. Get to know her parents. And maybe learn how to use her magic. But the town has an epidemic of flying monkeys, there's a drunk pirate walking down Main half naked, Regina Mills keeps looking at her like she's seen her naked, and, oh yeah, someone's killing off fairy godmothers.

**Author's Note:** I am SO excited for part 3. I'm positively giddy. Hope you're as stoked. And if you like it remember feedback is food to a writer. It keeps us energized and means faster chapter turnaround.

**Chapter One**

Thirty years and she still kept her greatest failures hidden in a series of padded rooms underneath Storybrooke's only hospital.

The only thing that had changed was who occupied the rooms. Unshakable and eternally optimistic young women and lovelorn former magic mirrors had been traded for **her**.

A mother who'd only recently learned how to love.

There was no magic in the room Cora resided in. A stone constructed by Rumpelstiltskin and the Blue Fairy hung from the ceiling and leeched all the magic from the room.

So her mother looked more drawn than before. Dark smudges beneath her eyes and her skin translucent. She always **smiled** when Regina came. That translucent skin stretched tight as her lips contorted into something disturbingly **genuine**.

When she spoke some of the warmth fled. Cora's was a cool voice, heart or no, and as human as she appeared to be just the timbre of that voice sent shivers through Regina.

She always ignored Regina's minute spasms. Like her voice there were some parts of Cora that were just herself. She didn't like blowzy shows of affection—positive or negative.

It was something familiar about her that Regina could still grasp, because the rest of her mother was so very different with a heart. That word? Genuine? It was the only way to describe the changes.

She'd grown up thinking the artifice of her mother real. How queer it was to see it had been a lie.

All of it had been.

Regina had only visited her twice in her new prison, the first time her mother's joy had been the most disturbing aspect of the visit. This second time it was her melancholia. A malaise that was no act.

"I didn't think you'd come," she said. And Regina was familiar with the attempt at guilt. But the spark of hurt was new and made her shift uncomfortably.

"Gold—Rumpel suggested it." She kept calling him Gold. It was the town's influence. They'd all clung to the names she'd given them. She supposed it was habit or defiance but truthfully she was a little touched they all kept something of hers.

"He visits every day," Cora said. And she sounded…fond of the man that had orchestrated all their lives with such callousness.

She'd never spoken of Regina's own father that way. Was it the heart beating in her chest? Or was it the man who'd taught her how to pluck it out?

"But I want to know about you." Her mother leaned forward, the extravagant skirts of her dress spreading out around her. "How are you dear?"

"I'm fine." The retort was reflex.

Cora's eyes narrowed as she caught some lie in those two words. "He says you never leave your house."

Regina had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. "He may think he knows everything, but between his time spent with you and with Belle he's missed a few things Mother. I'm out. Often."

"Plotting revenge?"

"Living."

"So you've forgiven Snow?"

She shrugged and peered down at her shoes, "Without her heart its just not as entertaining."

"No, it isn't."

"You would know, wouldn't you?"

Her mother's face softened into a very human frown. "I would."

Cora didn't **fight** anymore. Not Regina at least. She bowed and was apologetic and **maddening**.

Regina started to stand.

"No, please." Cora reached out, "How's Henry? Your friends?"

"Why do you care?"

"Because you're my daughter, and they're important to you."

There it was again. The sincerity. As though she really did care and it all wasn't an act for sympathy.

"Henry is choosing to stay in that awful apartment with Emma and her parents."

"Isn't he your son?"

"He is, but…trust was broken." She could still remember the other Henry. Who'd felt so betrayed by her lies, and abandoned because of her zeal. She twisted the ring on her hand, "If this helps rebuild it then he can stay with them as long as he likes."

"How can trust be rebuilt if he doesn't even see you dear?"

"Because he's my son. Because I too am familiar with rebuilding trust with a parent. He needs space." She needed space.

Cora seemed to understand that, even if she prickled at the accusation inherent in Regina's words. "You've learned patience."

Regina had learned nothing of the kind. She just had the luxury of knowing a future. Seeing it. Henry needed space because another Henry had told her as much, and she could give it because she knew, after everything, he was still **her** son. A few months living with idiots in a tiny apartment with no privacy and he'd be back, and they would heal, and at least one love of her life would be salvaged.

"And your friends?"

It rankled to call them friends. Four Thieves or "those flaming assholes" sounded better in her head. "Friends" was the kind of word **Snow** would use. "My "friends" have adjusted," she said.

"I'm glad you have them. Everyone needs someone."

"They care for me, and I care for them as much as I can, but they're not **someone** Mother. That person is lost."

Cora clearly thought of Daniel. Kind and sweet and killed by her own hand.

But Regina… Regina thought of the woman with the sad smile and the broken glasses. Taken, not by Cora's hand, but by Regina's.

She squeezed it into a fist.

Dwelling on the dead was worthless. Regina took a deep breath and squared her shoulders. She put her grief aside and crossed her legs primly. "In my travels, in the time between you stabbing me and me arriving here, I met a woman much like you." It **was** her. "She spoke of a brewing war."

"There are always wars brewing."

"Hm, but this one frightened her," she leaned in, "and I assure you she did not frighten easy."

"That was out there," her mother waved to some nebulous beyond, "but we're in Storybrooke. Accessible only by curse."

"Or shiny shoes. Or a god's gift. This world is not as walled in as you'd think, and if a war is coming we should be prepared."

Her mother smiled, one somewhere between the pride of a good mother and the awfulness of an evil witch. "Then it's a good thing I taught you how to lead."

"You must have heard something. Before here?"

"You were out amongst those other worlds longer than me dear. Perhaps instead of looking for answers here," she pointed at herself, "you should look for them there." Her finger jabbed out and painfully poked Regina's forehead.

She hissed in pain and sat back. "You're not going to help me."

"I wish I could."

Cora, this Cora, with her heart and no magic and no town to rule, really **did** want to help, and really **did** have nothing to offer. Regina sighed and stood.

"You're leaving?"

"I'm afraid so Mother. Unlike some people in this room I have plans."

"Plan to stare at my grandson from the street and do nothing to reclaim him?"

"No. I have a dinner party to go to. With friends."

The word that had rankled her cut through her mother, and the stricken look warmed her all the way to Aurora's home.

####

She hadn't been asleep exactly, but Emma had managed to tip her desk chair back to the perfect angle. Her legs had been stretched out and resting on her desk and she had her butt in optimum non-butt asleep position. She'd collected her pencil and was trying that rubber pencil thing Mary Margaret kept telling Henry **not** to do with his fork at the dinner table.

But the stupid station phone rang, spoiling her balance, her pen trick, and her evening. Also her self-esteem. Because the ringer on those stupid phones from the 80s was louder than God and scared her so badly she tipped **backwards** instead of forwards.

Her legs shot skywards as she slammed into the floor and she had to do a sloppy roll out of the chair that would have lost her the princess pageant she was pretty sure Aurora and Mary Margaret wanted to have. She scrambled across the floor to the phone. "Sheriff's department," she asked a little breathlessly.

The raised eyebrow could be **heard** over the line, "Did I interrupt something," Regina asked.

"No. Just—what?"

Regina sighed. And yes she sounded very put upon, but there was also a little tremor too. "You need to come to the Basile residence."

"Are you…inviting me to dinner with Sleeping Beauty and her parents?" Mulan had been begging for the night shift all week to get out of the dinner.

"No Em—Miss Swan. I'm not." She didn't fail to notice the aborted "Emma." Regina did that a lot since the Enchanted Forest. Called her Emma and then rolled it back to a Miss Swan like she was an itinerant and feckless bail bondswoman and she was an all-powerful mayor. She was pretty sure people were going to start thinking that was her name soon.

"Did you hear me Emma?"

Ha! She said her name that time. No Miss Swan. No—wait what? "What'd you say?"

"I said there's been a murder."

####

The victim was one Sister Merryweather. No last name. Fairies didn't have last names. These nuns didn't either. Which probably explained why the Curse had shoved them all into the convent.

The poor woman was deader than dead when Emma arrived. All she could see was the bright blue of her habit and two tiny feet clad in heeled boots that looked straight out of the 1800s sticking out of a pond. The boots weren't **that** bad. It was the spats that made were bad. Made those two feet look like they belonged to some wicked witch shoved under a house. But she probably hadn't been that wicked, and instead of under a house she'd been plopped into the pond at the center of the Basile estate.

She was face down. The voluminous cloth of her habit floating around her body and her arms stretched out like she'd been asking Jesus himself to come take her soul. The flashing lights on top of Emma's cruiser flashed on the scene, making all the huge topiaries surrounding the pond appear a little nightmarish.

Regina stood next to the body. She was back in her "Mayor Mills" clothes after her time in the hospital. Grey slacks and white silk shirt and a tailored coat the went to her knees. Only the white bandage wrapped around her hand hinted at where she'd spent almost a month and a half. It stood out with her arms were wrapped around herself to fight off the oncoming chill of fall.

She looked irritated. Which… Okay Regina **always** looked irritated. It was her default state. She'd probably shot out of Cora looking that way.

Emma hit the brights on her cruiser to better illuminate the scene and Regina had to shade her eyes with her bandaged hand so she could know **who** she was frowning out.

"Is blinding me really necessary," she called when Emma got out of the car.

"I was trying to get some light on things. Do the Basiles not own outdoor lighting?"

"I'm sure I could ask," but Regina didn't make any move to do so. She stood there, one hand now in her pocket while the other kept shading her eyes.

"Where's the coroner?"

Regina raised any eyebrow. "Until you came along this town hadn't had a death in twenty-eight years."

"So no coroner?"

"None."

"Fine. How about call the hospital and have them send over an ambulance then."

"While you…?" Regina was entirely too skeptical. It couldn't be healthy for her.

Emma held up her phone. "While I document the scene. And try not to go far though I need—"

"A statement. Yes. The others are all inside sobbing or drinking and waiting for you to play at detective."

Then, doing exactly as asked, Regina took a few steps away and drew out her phone. She tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear as she spoke and when she noticed Emma was staring at her like an idiot she motioned back towards the body with irritation.

So Emma knelt down, pulled on some rubber gloves, and did the whole murder thing.

It was, technically, her first murder investigation. Being a bail bondswoman didn't really lend itself to solving crimes. But she'd read plenty of mysteries, watched the dumb instructional videos Graham had insisted she watch when he first gave her the job and she liked to think she was a pretty good problem solver.

And how difficult could it be to solve a murderer who had to have left some big ass clues compared to finding a runner with nothing but a vague description of their face and their preference for cheap beer? Investigating was investigating, didn't matter what the crime was.

So she did what she would have done when tracking a perp. She took a **lot** of photographs with her phone. Photos of the body, and the water, and the first few leaves falling to spell the end of summer and beginning of fall.

"That going on your Instagram," Regina asked over her shoulder.

Emma looked back in alarm. "You know what Instagram is?"

"I have a passing familiarity."

From Aurora no doubt. Since moving to Storybrooke she'd absorbed the new world's culture like a **sponge**. Emma found her hunched over a computer at the station every damn day. She'd had to go buy her reading glasses when her eyes got too tired, and then Aurora had balked at the style, learned what an optometrist was, and now had a very stylish custom pair. And it was almost exclusively so she could browse Instagram and Pinterest.

**That** was a whole other addiction. She kept getting ideas for clothing from Pinterest, making them, and then bring them in and insisting Sheriff Swan and her fellow deputy, Hua, try them on so they could be both functional **and** fashionable.

Hook, who was somehow still their friend, tagged along for most of the fashion shows. Him and his fucking parrot. Between the two of them and Aurora the station had become a mess of inappropriate and cutting comments.

The only upside was that Mary Margaret stopped stopping by to "check up" on Emma while she worked. The last time she'd come she'd been dragged into doing a walk down the makeshift runway and having her outfit disparaged by a bird.

She'd been…upset.

"You know I don't believe there's actually an app for that," Regina said. She was still standing behind Emma and still being a nosy—whatever.

"What?"

She motioned at Emma's phone, still clutched in her hand with the screen on. "I don't think they make an app that just **solves **the crime for you."

"I know that," she snapped.

"Are you sure?"

Not another rude comment. Just the question. Emma stood up and shoved her phone into her back pocket. "Yes, I'm sure. **And** I know how to investigate without an 'app' or whatever."

"A murder isn't looking for Pongo when he runs off."

"No, it's more like looking for this sleazy guy who ran a little meth empire and skipped his bail. It's hunting for bad guys and I'm really good at that."

Her boast was met with Regina's frank appraisal. "Yes," she sniffed, "I suppose you are." The up down look and haughty approval weren't supposed to **sear** quite like they did. Every damn time Regina looked at Emma it was sort of like Regina was thinking about fun things they could do naked. And it wasn't even sketchy like when Hook did it. It was more like she already…**knew** what naked Emma was like in bed. Like she knew and she **missed** it.

Emma shuddered. "Any idea on the ETA for the ambulance?"

"They're on their way and—"

"Emma!"

Both women turned to see David nearly forget to put his truck in park in his race to get to them. "Are you okay," he shouted.

"Yeah," she glanced at Regina, who watched the two of them with barely contained mirth, "I'm fine. What are **you** doing here?"

"I heard what happened and came to help."

"Heard from—" She glanced at Regina again.

The other woman held her hands up, "Wasn't me dear."

"Then?"

"Merryweather's sisters called the Mother Superior and she called Mary Margaret and I. Your mother has Ruby watching Henry and is talking to the nuns at the convent."

God damn—Emma had to take a deep breath to keep from railing against the guy. Because she knew he **meant** well. He and Mary Margaret both did. But between living with them and dealing with their overprotective and overbearing parent act she was getting close to strangling them.

Probably Mary Margaret before David. The guy could get a lot of mileage out of his one-eyed wounded puppy look. The spot where his eye had been had finally healed enough for him to switch from big white bandages to an eyepatch. It was black and very tasteful and when Hook had seen it he'd waved his hook and said "welcome to the pirate life matey" and his awful should be roasted and served with carrots and potatoes bird had squawked something about how it was an improvement.

So really the strangle list went Mary Margaret, that fucking bird, **then** David. She suspected that telling him he was number three and not number two on the list wouldn't be taken as the compliment it definitely was.

"I got this," she told an expectant David. "And the nuns too. All of it really. You guys can, like, go do wedded reunited bliss or something."

Regina snorted.

"We want to help." God that stupid one-eyed puppy look.

"Right. I get that, but—"

"But you and your wife have a tendency to take over every project you attempt to 'help' with," Regina interjected. "You seem to keep forgetting you've moved from a feudalistic society to a democratic one."

David scowled, "And who's fault is that?"

"If you two start fighting about the curse again I'm putting both of you in a holding cell and leaving Hook's bird to stand guard."

The mere **idea** of that was enough to get them both to shut up.

"David," the puppy dog look got worse when she said his proper name and she gave in. A little. It wasn't like she was an unfeeling **monster**. "If you really want to help you can get my voice recorder out of the cruiser and try and take statements in the house."

"Are you su—"

"Yes."

"And Regina?"

The other woman stepped closer, her eyebrow raised, "You can maybe tell me why the hell someone drowned a nun."

####

Being in the hospital recuperating from a cursed knife wound that should have killed her got Regina out of two different "meet my friends" dinners with Aurora's mothers.

She got out of the third and fourth one by conveniently having "Henry" time.

Number five she'd skipped by getting Killian drunk and then calling to say she needed to sober him up.

She'd nearly managed avoiding a sixth dinner but Aurora had shown up at her house and threatened to tell everyone about the thing with her and the bevy of blond sirens.

Having a reputation to maintain, Regina had finally acquiesced. She prepared a lovely apple cobbler and arrived at the Basile residence at exactly six o'clock. Mulan had opened the door and welcomed her with the wide eyed look of an exhausted and out of her element woman.

Back on the boat Mulan had insisted that she wanted to meet Aurora's family, but actually **living** with Aurora's mothers in the giant mansion the curse had given Briar Rose Basile had proven…trying. They cooed a lot more than Mulan was used to. And hugged. They were **really** big on hugging.

That was where the perk of being the evil queen who cast a curse paid off for Regina. Between her overly polite smile, well known former friendship with Maleficent and the **apple** pie Aurora's mothers had both met her with a great deal of disdain.

"They dislike you more than me," Killian had mumbled when he arrived.

"They only dislike you because you ask keep bringing Sinbad and he keeps asking for a threesome," Mulan had said out the side of her mouth in a low enough voice for Aurora and her mothers not to hear.

Killian had downed half his snifter of brandy. "Which is why I left him back on the boat this time."

Killian was the only one of them still living on the Jolly Roger. Regina wouldn't have said it aloud, but she was worried about how much time he spent out on his boat just…polishing the mast.

It couldn't be healthy.

Neither she or Killian, or even Mulan, had been prepared when at seven o'clock Aurora's fairy godmothers had arrived. All three of them. And they'd brought **mirth**. The cloying kind of joy that put Regina's teeth on edge.

They'd even smiled at Regina and hugged her like they cared.

It was repulsive.

"Isn't it wonderful to have us all together," Aurora had asked.

And maybe for her it **was** wonderful. She had her parents, her girlfriend, her best friends, and the three godmothers she hadn't seen in decades. It was her happy ending.

Which was the only reason Regina didn't snipe the **whole** dinner. As much as she disliked fairies and unfettered princess joy she wasn't about to ruin the happy ending of someone who actually…

Aurora **cared**. Genuinely. And what's more, unlike **some** princesses who would remain nameless, she backed up her professions of caring with action.

Which was why Regina had felt a little miserable when, around nine o'clock that night, Aurora had gone looking for her shortest godmother and found her dead in the pond. Seeing a happy ending marred wasn't quite so pleasant when one liked the person.

She didn't tell Emma that when she'd asked her what happened. **This** Emma would have balked at her empathy and then lowered her voice and asked Regina how she **really** felt.

Instead Regina told her about the dinner and how Merryweather had bustled herself outside because she found the enormous garden at the back of the Basile estate so "gorgeous" and needed be alone to commune when nature. And how when she'd been gone a good long while Aurora had told everyone she was off to see what was keeping her .

Aurora's screams had brought the rest of them out, and they'd gathered around the body while Regina reached out and tried to see if there was some flicker of life she could use to bring the woman back.

There'd been none. So they'd all gone inside to drink stiff drinks and wait for Emma and Regina had stood outside staring at a dead body and wondering why, if her curse was broken, were all the happy endings such shit?

####

"You guys were just enjoying dinner?" Emma was skeptic.

"You seem skeptic."

She ignored the way Regina's lips quirked up into a half smile when she spoke.

"Well, I mean, it's you and Hook."

"Yes," she looked away like she was too cool to be bothered, "and Mulan and Aurora. They wanted us there for dinner."

"With a bunch of fairies you cursed."

She shrugged, "They're forgiving. Must be all that nun in them now."

Regina made it sound incredibly dirty. The wolfish smile didn't help.

"Classy." Emma knelt beside the body again and looked back towards the house, "So you hear screams, all run out and she's dead."

"As my ex-husband."

Emma would ignore that. "And no one was away from the group?"

"No one but Aurora, who probably **didn't** kill her beloved fairy godmother."

"Maybe." There was no sign of an actual weapon, just water everywhere and a face down nun.

"The woman was technically her aunt, and instrumental in raising her," Regina said quietly, "She wouldn't go sitting on her head while she drowned in a pond."

"Someone could have taken her heart, forced her to."

"Her heart's intact."

"You sure?"

Regina's eyes were dark with some kind of story Emma really didn't want to know about. "I assure you, I'm now quite sensitive to heart magic. If she didn't have her's I'd know."

It was that "now" that raised Emma's curiosity—No. She shook her head. No, she was definitely **not** going to ask Regina to elaborate.

"Okay, so either Aurora murdered her for reasons unknown, or someone was waiting for Merryweather's little walk."

"Or someone used a disappearing bolas to knock her in and keep her trapped until she died."

As serious as Regina sounded Emma could only side eye her, "Yeah, I'm gonna stick with my theories."

"What's wrong with mine?"

"It sounds ridiculous?"

"The dead woman is known to a few generations of children as a huffy little blue fairy."

Point. But Regina didn't have to look so smug about **making** her point.

"All right, your **majesty**, any other ideas? Maybe some CSI super zoom or some spell that reenacts the crime."

"You're trying to be sarcastic but to most people in town you'd just sound like an idiot Emma." She refused to believe anyone would find the disappearing bolas theory viable.

"Is that a yes or a no?"

"It's a no," Regina said with a sour look. "I can, however, help, if you'd allow it."

She waved to the body as an invitation.

"That's it. I ask and you just let me?"

"Gotta trust someone right?"

She immediately regretted her choice of words. Regina's face softened like she was genuinely **touched** and the locket Emma hadn't taken off since the Enchanted Forest flared against her chest with an unfamiliar heat. It had always been cold when Regina had looked her.

"Emma…" Regina started—her eyes vulnerable.

"Either someone did a helluva job coaching them or they're telling the truth," David announced loudly. He came lumbering through the leaves and Emma was kind of surprised she hadn't heard him earlier.

Regina coughed and seemed to hide a blush by kneeling down to peer at the body.

Giving her space to do whatever it was she was gonna do Emma turned back to David. "Stories all check out?"

He wagged the dictaphone at her, "They're all basically the same. Dinner, she left, Aurora eventually went after her, body."

"They give any clue as to who would want to kill her?"

"She was a fairy," Regina said, "list would be sizeable."

David actually agreed, "Fairies tend to make enemies, especially with the unsavory kind of people. She piss you off recently Regina?"

"Well, she hugged me, but that hasn't been a murderable offense in at least ten years."

He rolled his eye.

"A joke," Regina said.

"We noticed. What about the other evil in town?"

"How should I know? It's not like I keep in touch with them."

"Could you get in touch," Emma asked.

Regina didn't seem crazy about the idea. She hugged herself tightly and looked away for a moment. Like she was trying to pull herself together and prepare.

"I mean, if you can't, David and I can do it."

"No," she tried to smile, "No, I can do it."

"Shouldn't we get the Mother Superior to do it," David asked. "Because, no offense Regina, but you could have killed this lady."

"So could the Mother Superior," Emma said, surprised at how sharp she sounded, "Regina has a solid alibi and she's agreed to help, so she's who we're using. Okay?"

The ambulance had arrived by that point and the two EMTs were in the back gathering the body bag and gurney.

Emma went and knelt next to Regina, "Times about up. Any clues?"

Regina waved her hand and the body glowed purple. "She was casting magic when she died."

"And you can tell…?"

"It'd be white if she hadn't," she said simply.

"So she was defending herself."

"Perhaps." Regina's eyes scanned the pond. "She, or the person that killed her, did something." She held her hand out and red hot sparks burst against her fingers. Emma thought she smelled something burning but Regina didn't even flinch. "I can't see **what** spells were cast."

"So either she was protecting the killer—"

"Or the killer is a magic user as well." She dropped her hand and the glow around the body disappeared. "Either way, I'd be careful who you trust. Any fairy, witch or wizard could have done this."

"Except you?"

"Oh I could have done it."

Emma sighed.

"But I didn't. And I rather like to know who did."

"Looking for murder tips?"

Regina's lips quirked up into a half smile of amusement, "Something like that."

Which meant **nothing **like that.

The two of them stood in companionable silence and watched the EMTs' careful removal of the body. David stepped away to make phone calls to his wife and Regina, in a surprising show of maturity, didn't make a snide comment about it.

"You seem a little…"

Regina raised an eyebrow.

"**Nicer** than usual," Emma finally said.

"You're suggesting I've changed," she asked in wry amusement.

"No." She said quickly.

Regina shrugged. "I can be nice, you know."

Emma wasn't sure of that. Regina claimed to be different but Emma still saw that woman that made her first year in Storybrooke hell and killed Bluebeard. Just because she'd saved them all from Cora and now had a couple of friends didn't mean she was different.

"How has Henry's first week at school been?"

Emma went with the change in topic smoothly, "Good. Better than most of the kids. Thirty years of the same curriculum and I think they were kind of set in their ways. Henry's taking on a real leadership role."

Regina looked pretty shrewd for a minute. "Just be careful. The town may see him as your son now, but they remember him as mine."

"You think someone would try to hurt you through him?"

"I think this town isn't all the lollipops and hugs Snow and David like to claim it to be. People will surprise you Emma, even the best of them."

"The worst too."

####

Regina found herself smiling at what was clearly a complement.

Which made Emma blush.

Emma wasn't very good at giving compliments if they weren't to an eleven year old. She rubbed at her neck and looked back towards the house. "Guess I should go talk to them, let Mulan and Aurora know they don't have to come in tomorrow and junk."

"Really," Regina raised her eyebrow, "you're giving them the day off after a murder?"

"Of someone they knew!"

"As someone who had to share uncomfortably close quarters with both women I can safely say they don't need the time."

"Isn't Aurora, like, crying?"

"Yes, one of her beloved aunts has just been drowned in her pond. But that's tonight. Tomorrow she'll want justice, or at least a lot of filing to keep her busy."

One of the EMTs, noting how close Regina was to Emma, glared pointedly before going to David instead. The glares happened almost as much as the quick avoidance of eye contact in post-Curse Storybrooke.

Regina didn't mind too often. The latter was amusing, and the former was condescending, but harmless. It was only when either ended with things not happening that she needed to happen. Like she needed to know the body was being transported and to where and, maybe more importantly, the **sheriff** needed to know that too. Not some deputized princeling.

Charming shook the EMT's hand like a real nice guy and then made his way over to them, his head ducked so his one eye could watch the ground.

"They're taking the body back to the hospital and putting it in the cafeteria freezer."

Emma wrinkled her nose. "Why not the morgue?"

"Because we don't even have a funeral home," Regina said. "Is someone doing an autopsy?"

David shrugged, "That's up to Emma. If we need someone I'm sure Whale will do it."

The mention of his name sent a vile feeling through Regina and she had to swallow back a bit of bile. "There's no one else?"

"You're the one that said he was Frankenstein."

That had been one of her first tasks when she'd come back, outing the "good" doctor and threatening him within an inch of his life. Emma had dragged her off of him and asked her what the hell it was about.

Regina had decided **not** to tell her that maudlin little story.

"He **likes** dead bodies, doesn't mean we should have him carving them up," she countered.

David and Emma shared an identical look. "Whale's doing the autopsy Regina, but if you want you can come tomorrow and watch."

Regina was surprised, "You're not doing it tonight?"

David looked down at his phone and Emma shrugged, "Not like the killer is going anywhere. Unless you or one of the three in there did it."

That was the one part of the whole murder Regina was sure of. "We didn't."

"So it can hold until tomorrow."

"Uh," David looked a little pale. "The Mother Superior and Mary Margaret are already headed to the hospital to watch."

"Well they can un…head or whatever. And they're not watching anyways! Sheriffs and deputies only."

"And the mayor," Regina said helpfully.

"And the mayor—Are you still mayor?"

She jerked her chin in David's direction, "Not like his wife is doing it."

"Because you made her a 4th grade teacher instead of a civil servant!"

"We'll hold emergency "the mayor is an evil queen" elections **later **David. Right now she's helping us hunt for a killer and I need her there for magic…"

Regina and David both raised an eyebrow in anticipation.

"Stuff."

Locquacious as always. Regina would have smiled fondly but the two of them would have seen it and been idiots about it.

David, much less argumentative then before the eye patch waved his hand. "Fine. I'll go cut your mother off at the pass." He pegged Regina was a cool gaze, "See you bright and early."

"Wouldn't miss it," she said as cooly.

Emma shuddered when her dad turned away and when he was out of earshot she asked, "Can you two be any more frigid?"

"We're just being polite."

"At subzero temperatures. I think I got goosebumps." She held her arm, still covered by her jacket, out as evidence.

Regina refused to look. "That's the onset of fall. I shouldn't have to remind you that it's brisk here in Maine."

It was the rueful shake of the head and little smile Regina caught out of the corner of her eye that told her it was safe to turn and face Emma directly.

The Sheriff, once more at ease, hitched her thumb in the direction of the house. "I'm gonna go have a chat with you little gang. Care to join us?"

"I'm afraid I can't. You asked me to help remember."

"And that's—"

Regina shoved her hands back into her coat pockets and stalked closer, "This town is just filled with all sorts of vile and malicious witches and wizards Emma," she leaned in closer than was appropriate and smiled, "and **you** asked me to help stop one. Shouldn't I get started?"

####

Regina was entirely too close. Close enough that Emma could see the outline of the chain she wore around her neck, and the fine hairs on her cheeks and even the little wrinkles in her lips—Eye to eye Swan!

She tried to stare Regina down. Just looked her in the eye like they always did. Regina didn't stare back with the hunger for a challenge or that incredibly **fiery** kind of rage of hers.

If anything she looked…nervous.

Like she was putting on a show for Emma to cover up the fear. Which…it made sense. Emma was asking her to help hunt a killer and to dredge up relationships she hadn't touched in thirty years or more. In her shoes Emma would have been scared too.

She knew Regina well enough not to call her out. It was fun to piss her off, but she needed Regina focused and preferably not wounded in the pride department.

"Yeah," she said, "you probably should."

Regina's mouth set in a firm line and she nodded. "Good." Turning away she paused to call over her shoulder, "And see that Killian gets home would you? I suspect he's had far too much to drink."

That suspicion proved to be accurate, and after chatting with Aurora, her parents, two distraught nuns and a mildly irritated Mulan, she slung Hook's arm over her shoulder and dragged him to her cruiser.

The pirate laid out across the backseat and she had to role the window down so he could stick his feet out after he spent a good fifteen seconds smacking the glass with his heel.

She looked back at him when she stopped at a stop sign. His permanent scruff had grown into a full grown beard and he had the ruddy cheeks and nose and sallow skin of a drunk.

"Think you should maybe start laying off the rum Captain Jack."

"It's Kill-i-an," he enunciated.

"It's drunk."

"That too," he scowled and one of his heels clanged against the door's frame. "I'd be much more sober if you lot just let me murder the imp."

"I'm not stopping you."

"**You'll** arrest me. As will the lovely sapphic sisters serving as your deputies. And Regina…" He smashed his boot against the outside of the door again in frustration.

"Hey! You don't pay taxes so how about you lay off city property."

"She says I can't kill him. Says it isn't **time**."

Which made it sound like there would eventually **be** a time. "You think she's got his murder all plotted out and is just waiting huh?"

"No, I think her mother's in love with the bastard and she can't bear to break the bitch's heart."


	2. Chapter 2

**Title: **Dangerous is the Vexed God (2/?)

**Author:** Maggiemerc

**Rating: **M

**Spoilers**: Veers from canon after the third episode of season 2.

**Disclaimer**: Of course I don't own them. All the lady loving would be hella canon if I did.

**Summary: **Emma Swan just wants to adjust to life in a post-Curse Storybrooke. She wants to get to know her kid. Get to know her parents. And maybe learn how to use her magic. But the town has an epidemic of flying monkeys, there's a drunk pirate walking down Main half-naked, Regina Mills keeps looking at her like she's seen her naked, and, oh yeah, someone's killing off fairy godmothers.

**Chapter Two**

Regina Mills was not a morning person.

Emma didn't expect that. She'd assumed Regina was one of those nuts up at the crack of down milling her own damn flour for her bread and grinning condescendily at anyone who had just staggered out of bed.

As she considered that idea she realized it was about the exact opposite of Regina, who was a spoiled queen who'd lived half her life in a town created to personally please her.

Of course she'd be offended at the sun for rising.

"Want some coffee Regina?"

"I want eight hours of sleep and that obnoxious smile of yours flayed off your face."

Despite her miserable look Regina was put together. Her hair was in place and her clothes neat. She'd even applied makeup to the dark bags under her eyes.

"You slept for one week straight in the hospital. How can you still be tired?"

Regina held up her bandaged hand, "I was in a coma because of a curse!"

"David's up," she motioned to the end of the hall where David was yawning and scratching his belly. "And he was in a coma for twenty-eight years."

Regina pretended to ignored her, "I take it back," she said. "I **do** want coffee." She disappeared in a puff of purple.

Emma was never gonna get used to Regina's new found fondness for just—puffing places like a pretty non-blue version of Nightcrawler.

At least this time it was excellent, if accidental, timing. Whale, in his rumpled white coat, pushed through the door, a stiff body on a gurney being wheeled behind him like a macabre parade.

Since coming back through the portal Regina had a unique and **intense** aversion to the doctor. Her second day out of the coma Emma had come in and found her weak and pale and using her magic to crush Whale's throat with an IV stand.

She refused to tell anyone **why **she hated him. Emma had even asked Mulan and Aurora about it. They'd both shrugged and Aurora had said something about how "she doesn't talk much about what happened over there."

"Over there" being the mysterious place that had changed Regina and left her with nothing but those lingering looks of hers and that locket around her neck.

It was unnerving as hell and something Emma worked **really** hard not to think about. Fairytale lands and princesses and princes for parents were bad enough. She wasn't going to add the time travel implied by Regina to the mix.

Emma and David followed Whale into an OR where the orderlies lifted Merriweather's body onto an empty table. The doctor slipped on rubber gloves that went up to his elbows and a black plastic apron and big magnifiers that made him look like a creep. He picked up a sharp looking scalpel and smiled way too happily for Emma's taste.

"Now then," he asked, "shall we begin?"

####

Regina could have gone to the hospital cafeteria for her coffee, but she'd lived nearly six weeks in that hospital recuperating and the cafeteria had stored a dead body all night. So she went to Granny's instead.

The diner had been completely restored since the battle. According to Henry Rumpelstiltskin had even assisted the fairies in the final days of the rebuild—which meant the building was probably laced with magical listening devices now.

It didn't stop Regina from going in. And neither did the old widow who ran the place. She was still sore about Regina knocking her unconcious and disguising Mulan as her.

And the curse.

And the destruction of her diner.

She was really sore about that last one.

Even though everything (curse excluded) had been in aid of saving her life and the lives of all her patrons who happily paid way too much for a second rate lasagna.

She glared hatefully at Regina when she stepped through the door, her eyes beady and judgemental.

"Oh please," Regina said aloud, "It's not like I kicked your puppy."

"You have kicked me," Ruby said from her spot behind the counter, "Twice that I remember."

Water under the bridge.

Regina waved dismissively and avoided eye contact, looking around the room at the various patrons—who all looked back with a mixture of fear and irritation. "Can I please just have a coffee? Large, black, devoid of excrement?"

Aurora, sitting all alone in a booth by the door and reading something on her tablet, snickered.

Regina zeroed in on her with a raised eyebrow. "I thought you'd be wallowing in bed this early." The clock over the counter said it was only six forty five.

Aurora motioned to the empty bench across from her and Regina took a seat. "Couldn't sleep last night. Been here since five."

"Reading?"

"Research." She waved down at the iPad she'd special ordered with her mother's credit card. "Apparently this land has hated witches for centuries."

"I assume you're reading about Salem?"

"One of their favorite methods of murder was drowning," she frowned at the screen. "They'd hold them under until the confessed or died."

Regina had a bad feeling she knew where this conversation was headed, and played with Aurora's napkin, forgotten on the table.

"According to this," Aurora glanced down at the screen again, "Wikipedia, you can't even scream when you're drowning."

Regina shifted uncomfortably—twisting the napkin around her fingers of her good hand. Aurora had her prescription reading glasses on, and the faint tint of the lenses masked some of the dark emotion in her eyes. Emotion most would considered decidedly un-princess-like. She started, "Aurora…"

"You try to breathe but you can't, and your head is under water so any sounds you make are muffled. You're alone." She looked up over the frames of her glasses. Her gaze was cool.

"Merryweather wasn't alone when she died."

"We were inside laughing and drinking—"

"And she was murdered. I'm aware. But dwelling on it—**empathizing** with the dead—helps no one."

"You're helping Emma find the monster who did this aren't you?"

"I've offered my services as a magic expert and she's agreed."

"Tell her I can help. Tell her I can—"

Regina reached out and snatched Aurora's wrist. "I know what you're capable of." She hoped the squeeze she gave her was comforting instead of alarming. She could never be sure how people would react.

A long shadow pass over their table as Ruby arrived with Regina's coffee. Her bright eyes were focused on Regina's hand. Specifically the unbandaged one wrapped around Aurora's wrist. Her lips—not quite as painted since the curse broke—were pursed in condemnation.

Regina yanked her hand away and reached for her coffee, "Took you long enough. Were you picking the beans yourself?"

She fired back, "Milking the cow."

Aurora looked up at the werewolf in surprise, "You have a cow?"

"What?"

"She was making an attempt at sarcasm," Regina explained. "She's about as successful at it as her best friend."

Ruby glared and stalked away.

"You should be glad she can't kill with a stare," Aurora murmured.

"Please. She can't even kill when she's turning into a giant wolf once a month."

"She could be lulling you into a false sense of security. Maybe one day she's going to stalk into your bedroom late at night and snap your head off and eat your remains."

Regina looked over in surprise, but tried not to let her alarm show, "You've given that some thought."

Aurora leaned forward, resting her chin on her fist, "I always assumed that if anyone I knew was going to be murdered it'd be you."

Regina hated to admit it, but she'd assumed the same thing.

After assuring Aurora she'd speak to Emma, and casting a quick spell to sour the large glass of milk Ruby was about to drink, she popped back to the hospital, where Frankenstein was elbow deep in the dead fairy's torso and looking very **happy** about that fact.

"Careful," she said, "you get too happy over that corpse and you'll have to change your pants Doctor."

Emma sighed and closed her eyes, "Gross."

"Come to marvel your work," Frankenstein asked cooly.

Regina inched close enough to be able to see the woman's insides. So many organs she knew the feel of, and even the look from books. She'd never actually seen them though. They glistened in the cool light of the OR. In particular the heart. Pale, solid, with big fat veins.

Nothing like the ones she still had in boxes in a tomb.

"She's still got her heart," she noted. As if that was evidence enough of her innocence. "Besides, if I went and killed her you can be damn sure I wouldn't have left the body behind."

Emma rubbed at her temple with her thumb, the movement shifted her collar enough for Regina to see the locket around her neck and she promptly became interested in her fresh coffee.

"There a reason you think Regina did it," Emma asked. There was weariness in her voice—like when she dealt with her parents or something "too frickin' fairy tale-like."

Whale prodded something a lung and it made a graphically squelching noise. Regina accidentally made eye contact with David, who looked just as disgusted as she felt.

"The victim drowned," Whale explained, "and I've found no signs of assault and no signs of a struggle on the body. There's no sign of drugs either."

"But that's not confirmed until a tox screen right," David asked. When everyone stared at him in surprise he rubbed the back of his head, "Henry and I watch Castle together."

It was Whale's turn to sigh, "As much as it pains me to say it, you're correct. However, tox screens are woefully inadequate when we consider the fact that she's a fairy."

"Was a fairy," Regina interjected, "in this world without her wand she's as human as the rest of us."

"But here's the thing though: she had the wand," Emma revealed. She jerked her chin in the direction of a metal tray, where the wand shimmered on top of a pile of the dead woman's clothes. "It was wedged in her girdle."

"My research into the physiology of magical creatures is woefully inadequate at this time," Whale said. Regina snorted. He ignored her. "But what little research I **have** done suggests that most toxins and drugs in the land would fail to work within the system of a fairy, human origins or no."

Regina's magic coiled in irritation. Frankenstein was insinuating, pretty strongly, that he'd experimented on some poor fairy to learn that.

Emma's face was completely slack—any hint of her understand ingwhat he said hidden by a blank stare. "Is that fancy mad scientist speak for it had to be magic?"

"Yes."

"Then how about you get back to the living patients Doc. We'll take it from here."

"I haven't finished the—"

"We got it Whale," David stepped up behind him. "You've got other patients to see to."

He looked from one Charming to the other before nodding reluctantly. "Very well. I call you when the tox screen comes back."

####

Emma watched Whale pack up all of his scary looking autopsy tools, toss his bloody mad scientist gloves in a biohazard bin and leave, the samples for the tox screen in a bag tucked under his arm.

"I take it we're all on the same page," Regina drawled. She'd set her coffee cup down and was staring after Whale with an unnervingly steely look.

"He's been doing experiments," David said.

"Could he have meant before the curse," Emma asked. She didn't think he had, but it was better to ask the other too then just assume the guy was vivisecting fairy nuns.

"Possibly," Regina murmured, her face screwed up in deep thought. "He and Rumpel—Gold were quite chummy back in the day. But it **sounded** like he was talking about fairies with human physiology, something that didn't exist until the Curse."

"So we might have just had the murderer autopsy his own victim?"

Regina shook her head, "I doubt it. While I'd take new samples to be tested just to be sure, I'm inclined to agree with the doctor as to the cause of death."

"Magic," David growled.

"Powerful magic—that he has no access to."

Shit.

"And you still can't…trace it or whatever?"

Regina held her hand out. It glowed—Emma's locket turning cold as a result. She wriggled in discomfort, but tried to stay focused on what Regina was doing.

The body glowed again too, more brightly than it had the night before in the pond. Emma could now see the magic ripple across the corpse as if it were tangible. The hair rose on the back of her neck and the locket went from being cold to being like a block of ice between her breasts.

Regina's hand trembled and David looked at Emma in alarm before tentatively moving forward. "Regina," he started.

She hissed and snatched her hand away like it'd been burned. The magic around the body turned to a fine mist that fell softly to the ground.

"Nothing. There's magic still masking the precise spells used. I can't see anything."

Emma thought about offering her own magic…whatever to help, but memories of the other times Regina had used it—memories of the ice water the blood in her veins had turned to—stopped her.

"Okay," she said instead. "So we've got someone with a lot of magic drowning fairies and we've got a mad scientist possibly vivisecting fairies."

"We can't be sure on that last one," David said.

Regina crossed her arms and grumbled, "The man experimented on his own brother's corpse. He's capable of anything."

"Either way. I need to talk with the Mother Superior."

David added, "And Gold. He's about he only one as powerful as Regina now, **and** he knew Whale from before."

"So which one do we speak to first," asked Regina.

"I'll chat with the Mother Superior. David you go pick up Whale, see what you can get out of him." He nodded eagerly.

"And me?" Regina was all expectant looking—a far cry from the usually completely reluctant woman she knew. Her lips quirked up into a half smile, "You want me talking to Ru—Gold?"

"I wanted to talk to him myself," Emma said, "I figured you could…"

Regina raised an eyebrow.

"I mean, there's other magic users right? Besides Gold?"

"There is," she said carefully, "But he's the most likely suspect."

"Right, but—" Emma knew this next part wasn't gonna go over well, "The thing is, you and Gold…you hate each other."

"Yes?"

"So maybe you talking to him about a murder isn't the best idea?"

It took a second longer than it should have for Emma's words to sink in. Regina stared at her cooly and then she realized what she'd said and recoiled. "You think I can't be objective?"

David snorted.

"Not helping," Emma said sharply.

He held up his hands in surrender.

"I—I can be **very** objective Emma. I'm the **queen** of Objectivity!"

"Snow White," she said simply.

Regina turned bright red, her mouth working for the right words before finally— "Oh screw you." She rounded on a very amused David, "**And** you." Turning back to Emma with very angry, dark, and hungry eyes she snarled, "And as I'm no longer necessary I'm leaving. You know where to find me **Sheriff**." She tapped the locket just beneath her blouse then grabbed her coffee and disappeared.

"Why do I feel like we just told her she couldn't sit with us at lunch," Emma asked.

"Don't worry about," David said, "according to your mother Regina's always been sensitive."

As if she'd heard what he said Regina popped back into the room. David yelped.

"And I forgot to tell you that Aurora would like to help. So perhaps she can help **that** unobjective idiot interview Whale? She's an excellent interrogator." She peered at David like he was a slug.

Emma was speechless. Managing only an, "Uh—"

"Also before I forget," she waved her hand towards the body. Purple smoke descended over it, and when it disappeared the deceased was dressed in a neatly pressed habit with her hands crossed over her chest and her hair all regrown and styled into a bob. "Her family shouldn't have to see her splayed open like a science experiment."

"Thanks," Emma mumbled.

Regina disappeared again.

"She's gonna backseat drive this whole case isn't she?"

David nodded. "You want to come with me and punch Whale? It'll make you feel better."

"Nah, I need to help the family make arrangements and talk to the nuns. But taking Aurora isn't a bad idea."

He nodded again and turned to leave.

"Oh, and try not to actually punch him when you talk to him," she called after him.

"If he resists?"

"No police brutality."

The son of a bitch actually **pouted**, leaving Emma to wonder what the hell kind of world he'd lived in before Storybrooke.

####

Standing there while a couple of nuns and Aurora's moms huddled around a body was more emotionally trying that Emma had expected. They'd cried and remarked on how alive she looked.

"Like she's sleeping," Briar Rose had said.

Then the two fairy godmothers and the one fairy mom had produced their wands and waved them over the body. Roots had sprung out from some invisbled seam beneath Merryweather's corpse and wrapped around, forming a stunning coffin that looked like the gnarled base of a tree. A bouquet of blue flowers had sprouted from the place where her head lay. The four women had all smiled sadly, before each one plucked a flower. Briar Rose plucked three more and offered one to Emma. She took it reluctantly and stuck it in the zipper of her jacket like a corsage.

Afterwards she took the long way back to the apartment. The autopsy hadn't been stinky as far as dead bodies went—with the flowers it had even smelled kind of nice, but in her haste to get out of the apartment without waking Henry that morning she'd blindly reached for, and grabbed, the wrong bra. It was the ruined one she'd worn in the Enchanted Forest and needed to throw away. The underwire was biting into her sides like a freaking torture device.

She would have just taken it off and shoved it under the car seat, but she figured going braless to interview some nuns was tacky.

Out of habit she took the long way from the hospital to the apartment. It was the route she'd used when ferrying Henry to and from to visit his mom and it took the car right along the bay. The docks were all empty and the bay itself filled with fishermen. She could see the mast of Hook's boat—one of the only ones still tied up. The asshole was probably dead to the world and she briefly considered driving down closer and running the sirens a few time just to annoy him.

But it would have annoyed the people dotted along the beach erecting tints and setting up long tables and chairs and building enormous bonfires.

The "annual" clambake was in two days. Annual being a loose term as it was, in fact, the first official town clam bake.

It had been Ruby's idea, but she'd passed off the organization of it to Mary Margaret and Kathryn Nolan. While most of the town just assumed it was a celebration of the curse being broken and families being reunited, Ruby's unspoken plan was to have someone she and David trusted watching Mary Margaret when they couldn't.

Most of the town didn't know about her heart issues. Didn't know that according to Regina her heart was in the hands of some mysterious queen in a far away land and there was almost zero chance of it being reunited with its owner. Zero chance of it being used against them either.

And Mary Margaret backed that claim up. She actually **agreed** with Regina. Insisted she didn't feel any different.

But everyone around of was still…concerned.

She was a lot more frigid than Emma had remembered her.

Her green eyes always seemed darker when she watched her. Even Henry, who had to be the most optimistic kid to ever live, was unsettled around her. "She needs a heart," he would say gently. "She can't love without it."

But she could. And she did! She smiled at David and would caress Emma's shoulder when she walked by her and she'd ruffle Henry's hair.

She was still Mary Margaret. Just…off a fraction. Emma probably wouldn't have even known if she hadn't seen David crush her heart in his hand or heard Regina's really bizarre and not so informative explanation.

She slowed the police cruiser down to watch Mary Margaret direct two of her dwarf friends wrestling with poles for a tent. She had a little clipboard clutched to her chest and was slicing one hand through the air. The wind off the water had turned her cheeks bright red.

From far away she still looked normal.

From far away she still had a heart.

The underwire jabbed into Emma's side and she pressed down on the gas. It was better not to think about the mom she'd probably lost just when she'd found her. Like Regina's locket it was better out of sight. Out of mind.

####

Regina assumed it was Mulan coming down the steps into her cellar. She walked with a grace that no one else she knew possessed, and stepped lightly, effortlessly avoiding the two steps that groaned like an old man. She was also the only person awake at that hour that would dare step into Regina's domain without invitation. Killian might have, but he was sleeping off the drink in his ship most likely.

"Thought you'd be helping with the murder investigation," Mulan said.

"Emma has me talking to the second-rate 'villains' to see what they know."

"So you're sitting in your cellar because…?"

"Because," Regina grunted, "I want to make cider." She was standing at the cider press, twisting it around and around enjoying the graphic noise of a apple pulp being smashed beneath a wooden plate. "Winter's coming and all."

Mulan poked around the cellar. She'd never been down there. To Regina's knowledge no one had but her and Henry. It was where she'd spend the fall and winter making cider. Most with apples from her tree. After Henry had arrived she'd started purchasing apples in bulk from the market and making larger batches to donate for Miner's Day.

The cider operation in her cellar had expanded from a small press and a few bottles, to something approaching an actual business. The cider aged in the oak barrels along the wall and she had even more enormous glass jugs for fermenting. To a layperson it looked terrifyingly science-like. Mulan approached one of the jugs and peered at the bulbous glass piece sticking out of the top.

"That's to control air intake for the yeast."

Mulan had no idea what she'd said but nodded like she did.

"I have a feeling I'll be going through quite a bit of cider this year with that alcoholic on the boat. Just wanted to get started on a new batch early."

"So…you're helping Killian get loaded?"

"If you put it that way."

"And avoiding hunting for Merryweather's murderer while you're at it."

Regina stopped crushing apple pulp and put her hands on her hips. Her bad hand ached a little from the pressure put on it, and her fingers were clumsy and numb. "Now you're just being critical."

Mulan poked one of the bottles and raised her eyebrow at Regina. "I'm not the one sitting in my cellar avoiding my responsibilities."

"Avoiding—I ran this town for **twenty-eight** years! Every budget meeting, Miner's Day, school fundraiser—even the clam bakes were organized by **me**. If I want to make an excellent batch of cider instead of running errands for Emma Swan I'm fully entitled!"

"Clam bakes?"

Damn it.

"You're mad about the clam bake so you're wallowing down here?"

"No. I'm irritated about the clam bake. I'm down **here** because I'm an incredibly powerful sorceress who could be helping Emma find a murderer but instead she told me to talk to some people and maybe she'd call me later." The last part came out as an unbecoming sneer.

Mulan rested her thumbs on the buckle of her belt and **stared**. That awful stare she'd used on everyone back on the damn boat to get them to do what she wanted. It was a stare of **judgement** and for, reasons Regina never understood, when Mulan stared at her like that she had an urge to be better.

It had to be some form of magic she'd learned while training to be a military genius.

"I sound like Snow White don't I?"

"If she sounds infantile."

She gave the cider press another turn, it resisted the entire way, the whole contraption whining in protest. She snarled and stepped away—throwing up her hands as she went.

"Very infantile," Mulan said.

"She said I couldn't be objective. **Me**. Did she miss the part where I put aside my own feelings and killed to save the world?" The part where she'd killed someone she loved to get her son back and now had to run around with a terrible version of her that was a bossy know it all that didn't know **anything**?

"What couldn't you be objective about?"

"That imp." She and Killian were currently having a disagreement about that bastard. Killian wanted him murdered immediately. Punished for his considerable crimes.

Regina kept seeing the way he honest to God **smiled** at her mother and had insisted they hold off on plans for murder.

"You and Gold **do** have a history. You wouldn't be my first choice to deal with him either."

"Still—"

"Regina." She **stared** again. "Someone murdered a person that Aurora cares about. We don't get to wallow. We don't have the luxury."

Regina sighed.

Caring about others was **exhausting**.

"I have an idea of someone who might know something. Care to join me after I prep this batch?"

Mulan rolled the sleeves on her uniform. She was the only one of the 4-person department that ever wore the drab ensemble. Regina supposed it was because she got to wear a whole belt of equipment with it and it made her feel like she was back in armor.

"Two people will probably make this faster."

Regina gave her a tight smile.

Not just exhausting. Grueling.

####

Emma was trying to pay attention to what the Mother Superior was saying. They were sitting in her office at the convent and sunlight was streaming through the wooden shades and onto the austure desk from which the former fairy governed her nuns. She had her hands settled in front of her on the desk, rolling her wand between her thumbs and forefingers.

"You think someone with magic did it," she asked quite seriously.

Emma said yes, and explained, but she kept glancing out the window, where a little man in a blue jumpsuit and bright red hat was stooping to collect dog shit from beneath a tree. She guessed he was the groundskeeper and she wondered what he'd done to Regina in another land to get stuck on dog shit duty.

"Why," the Mother Superior asked.

"I'm sorry—what?"

She squared her narrow shoulders and sat a little more primly, "Why do you think someone with **magic** killed Merryweather?"

"Uh…because she drowned in a pond and there was no sign of foul play?"

"She could have fallen."

Emma raised an eyebrow in surprise. "I mean, sure. She could have. But Regina thinks someone used magic."

"Regina? The Evil Queen."

Emma was surprised at the venom in the nun's voice, and the way she'd said the epithet. Emma could hear the capital letters—could hear all the dark and nasty history of the title when the Mother Superior used it. Regina's past stopped being abstract. Came into sharp focus.

She had to shake her head to clear dark thoughts from her head. "Former Evil Queen," Emma amended. "She's reformed."

A tight smile and glistening eyes, "You are so very much your mother's daughter. The hope you have is truly inspiring." Emma bristled. "But it is not so easy to just **stop** your wicked ways. Not when you were born into. Shaped by it."

"Maybe, but no offense Mother Superior, I spend time with the lady."

"And you trust her." The smile still stretched across the nun's face.

"Yeah, I do."

"As you trust her friends."

Emma snorted, "What, so they're evil too?"

"A pirate consumed by revenge, a warrior cast out from her own land, and…" It was the Mother Superior's turn to seem really uncomfortable—like Aurora's meer existence was unsightly. "The fairy girl."

Emma remembered the story Regina or Aurora or someone had told her. About how Aurora's moms were a queen and a fairy who gave up her wings to be with the woman she loved. Her fairy godmothers had been her mom's sisters—or what passed for sisters with fairies. And Maleficient was supposedly a changeling that had grown up in Briar Rose's court.

It hurt her brain thinking about it, but it clearly hurt Mother Superior more. She was **offended** by Aurora's existence. Offended enough that she must have been pretty upset that they were all having their cozy dinner together.

"If you don't mind me asking, where were you last night?"

The nun's mouth dropped open in horror. "Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting Sheriff?"

Emma plastered on a charming smile. "No. I know you. My parents trust you," she lied. "But there are other nuns—fairies here in the convent right? Maybe one who didn't like how close Merryweather is to her god daughter?"

The Mother Superior stretched her hands out flat across the table before her. The tips of her fingers turned white as she pressed them into the wood. "There are many, but we take an oath. We don't harm humans."

"Merryweather was a fairy."

"Once. She was human when she died. The oath applies. If one of us had…" she drew in a long breath, "It would be visible. A fairy can't commit such a heinous act without it showing on their skin."

"So it won't be a problem if I speak to everyone. Get alibis?"

The Mother Superior's smile was all at once fragile and knowing and angry. "No problem at all."

####

The little lawn gnome was wandering through the freshly planted pansies below the windows of the convent. His thick boots sunk deep into the mulch and his hands were brown with dirt, the ends of his nails completely black.

It had taken her and Mulan an hour just the find him. He served as the groundskeeper for half the town and wandered from place to place, tilling the earth, spitting big gobs of phlegm in the grass and planting awful pansies instead of the wide variety of gorgeous plants he was **supposed** to tend.

As far as she could tell the pansies were a post curse affectation. Like Whale vivisecting fairies or Gold being polite to people.

She and Mulan had to slog their way up the hill from where Mulan had parked her cruiser. Mulan's boots had smooth bottoms that slid on the wet grass and Regina's heels kept digging into the dirt.

A little breathless at the top of the hill she put her hands on her hips and pointed to the spot before her with her chin. "Come here please."

He grumbled, spat, and went back to planting pansies.

"Sir," Mulan said officiously, and too politely for the former gnome to listen, "we need to speak with you."

He pointed a fat little finger at Mulan, "You I'll speak to," he said in a soft voice. "**She** can fester."

Regina stalked closer, "I **could** fester, or I could turn you into a tree like that wife of yours."

"You turned his wife into a tree?"

"No, I did," he snarled, and then he waved hand rake in Mulan's face. "And I can do the same to you if you don't get her out of my sight."

"If you turn her into a tree I'll just turn her back and go kill a few of your woodland friends," Regina sighed. "Like that fox. I could use a nice pelt."

He swiped his hand rake at her, the three sharp prongs glittering as they slashed through the air.

Regina step back, but continued to grin nastily.

She didn't **actually** plan to skin the fox, as the fox was currently a high school boy who had a good chance of going all district in long distance running. The man in front of her didn't need to know that.

"Now that you to have threatened each other," Mulan glanced at Regina without taking her eyes off the gnome, "Can we ask our questions?"

"I don't know anything." He spat again.

"You don't even know what we're going to ask."

"It's about that busty little fairy that croaked right?"

Regina watched him turn back to his flower bed. He squatted with a grunt.

"Yes," she said, eyeing him suspiciously.

"I don't know anything."

"You were once the most powerful gnome in the Enchanted Forest. The very land whispered to you of everyone's secrets. You know **everything**."

"Didn't stop you from going to my brother for help when you cast your curse."

Right. Paul. "On the bright side…you didn't end up like him either." He was still a ugly lawn gnome statue in her back yard. "Please," she tried to smile polite, "tell us what you've heard."

"No," he spat.

"Mulan I've tried the polite way. Do you mind if I try a productive way?"

Mulan shrugged, "As long as there isn't any property damage."

She turned back around and grinned savagely at the little man. His ruddy complexion turned as pale as his beard and he raised his hand rake in defense.

"Go to hell hag."

She popped the knuckles on her good hand, "You first."

####

Emma had her head ducked down and was watching the pavement as she went back to her car. Her brain was sorting through the information she'd gather and she was trying to figure out why every single nun (none had been lost to Whale's experiments), excluding the three at Aurora's last night, had been at Granny's.

The nuns didn't eat out. Especially during the evening. It smacked of unnatural convenience that they **all** had the exact same alibi.

She was so wrapped up in puzzling out what the hell the fairies were up to that when the shadow passed over her head she just assumed it was a cloud.

Until is moaned like a guy being floated through the air like a god damned balloon.

When she steeled herself and looked up she did, in fact, see a little man being floated through the air. It was the gardener she'd seen earlier, minus his bright red hat.

**That** was clutched in Mulan's hands, and she was twisting it while watching Regina wave her hand and sent the guy into a loop a pilot would have been proud of.

"What the hell are you two doing!"

"Having a conversation," Regina drawled.

"He wasn't being helpful," Mulan added.

"So you're floating his butt through the air?"

Neither woman took their eyes off the man, who was cursing loudly and vividly. But both women still nodded, as one.

"Stop!"

"He deserves it," Regina argued.

"What the hell has he done to deserve—" Regina floated him directly towards Emma's head and she had to duck to avoid the profanity spewing little man. "—This?"

Regina wagged her finger up and down and he floated higher. "He used to turn people he didn't like into trees."

"Not okay but—"

"He also ran the largest lumber mill in the enchanted forest."

"Oh." That **was** actually pretty heinous. Only— "I didn't let people lynch you Regina, so I can't let you torture this guy just because he was a jerk over there."

"I'm not torturing him for that. I told you. He has information that I need."

"No, he has information **I** need, and it isn't legal to get it by floating him around like a Mary Poppins!"

Mulan winced and Emma had no idea why.

Then Regina swiped her hand upwards and the gardener disappeared into the morning sky.

Emma had to tilt her head all the way back to watch the little guy soar. "That is the opposite of what I asked," she sighed.

"I'm sorry. Last night you told me to help with the investigation. This **morning** you tell me to limit it to questioning former acquaintances. Which I am currently doing."

"Regina—"

"You have to make up your mind Emma. Do you want my help or not?"

"Of course!"

"Then let me do my job—"

"Not if it involves that," she jabbed her finger up at the sky.

There was a sound like a tiny oncoming train, that Emma only belatedly realized was the man screaming as he plummeted to his death. But Regina waved her hand and he jerked to a stop about three inches above the ground.

"David," Regina said cooly, "the sheriff has asked that I interview you in a less entertaining manner. But before I start that interview I'm going to pluck every single hair from your beard. With tweezers."

David? The…gnome?

Emma called out Regina's name again.

Regina ignored her, "You can save yourself that considerable pain." She flipped him up and floated him towards her, giving him enough height that they were eye level. "Tell me what you know."

David, David the gnome, grew perfectly still. And Emma and her deputy and that all-powerful mayor grew silent. The only sound was the birds above and the distant cars on faraway roads and the wind in tree.

He closed his eyes. Resigned himself. "Just whispers."

"Of what," Regina asked in a low voice.

He peered up through his eye lashes. "Tell me Regina, when's the last time you went strolling down Gingerbread Lane?"


	3. Chapter 3

**Title: **Dangerous is the Vexed God (3/?)

**Author:** Maggiemerc

**Rating: **M

**Spoilers**: Veers from canon after the third episode of season 2.

**Disclaimer**: Of course I don't own them. All the lady loving would be hella canon if I did.

**Summary: **Emma Swan just wants to adjust to life in a post-Curse Storybrooke. She wants to get to know her kid. Get to know her parents. And maybe learn how to use her magic. But the town has an epidemic of flying monkeys, there's a drunk pirate walking down Main half-naked, Regina Mills keeps looking at her like she's seen her naked, and, oh yeah, someone's killing off fairy godmothers.

**Author's Note:** This chapter took longer than expected to get out. On the bright side it is extra long?

**Warning:** Graphic discussion of the slaughtering of animals. The queasy are warned.

**Chapter Three**

Emma didn't get home until late. Regina had sent David the gnome, a guy who'd apparently inspired a cartoon about a **very** different gnome, floating back up into the sky and she'd refused to bring him back down. "He'll come down on his own," she said before poofing away and avoiding responsibilities.

Mulan had helped Emma track the floating gnome around town, but she'd gotten bored after a while and said something about "patrol" before bailing. Leaving Emma driving at a snail's pace behind the guy and waiting for him to come down low enough that she could use a borrowed dog catcher's loupe to grab him. David the deputy and Aurora had both, suspiciously, not responded when she'd radio'd for back up. Like Mulan had gotten to them first and told them about Emma's new impromptu mission.

After finally getting the guy back on solid ground he'd insisted he didn't want to press charges and the she had to insist that he didn't try and get revenge on his own instead. He'd promised, but her knack for seeing a lie wouldn't let her believe him.

She'd stopped by Regina's to warn her an angry gnome would come looking for her, but found her gone and Hook, sans pants, sitting in her kitchen eating a sandwich.

"No toaster oven on the Jolly Roger," he'd explained.

That hadn't explained the pants situation, but Emma's had been too irritated to ask.

She didn't get around to talking to Gold until the sun was nearly set. Then, after he assured her he was innocent she had to walk all the way over to the library to get Belle to corroborate his alibi, which she'd only done while blushing.

Probably because she was corroborating while Ruby stood at the check out desk thumbing through Laura K Hamilton paperbacks and scowling. The only person who liked Belle and Gold's relationship less was Cora.

When she finally made it home it was to a too damned busy apartment that was too damned small for three grown adults and a kid about four steps from puberty. Mary Margaret was sitting at the counter, her cheek resting in her hand and her other hand listlessly swirling wine in a glass. Henry had his wooden sword out and was jabbing and hiyaing up and down the staircase to the loft and David was at the stove setting something in a pan on fire.

She missed her stylish little apartment in Boston. It had been lonely and austere, but kids weren't clanging, ladies weren't drinking and stuff wasn't on fire.

It was quiet.

She missed quiet.

"What's with him?"

"Your father told him they're going to the stable tomorrow so he can learn how to ride a horse. He's practicing."

"With a sword?"

"Knights have to ride horses **and** fight with swords," Henry shouted.

The kid had been hounding anyone who looked like they'd even **touched** a sword to teach him about it. All of Emma's very tastefully edited stories of the Enchanted Forest had done little to cool the kid's desire for dangerous adventure in far off lands devoid of toilet paper.

Mary Margaret took a sip of her wine and eyed Emma over the glass. "You're home late."

"Remember that show David the Gnome?"

Her brow furrowed, "I remember the little guy who snitched on half the Enchanted Forest."

Emma took off her jacket and launched it at the coat rack. It just barely made it, and the whole thing tipped into the wall before righting itself. "Probably the same one. Regina got mad and sent him floating over the city for four hours. Which **someone** would have known if they'd had their radio on."

David didn't turn around, but he sort of ducked while he busied himself putting out his fire and plating something blackened.

"Did you finally get him down," Mary Margaret asked.

"With one of those dog catcher things. They say hi at the vet's by the way." She directed that comment towards David. His ears were pink.

"Did you find the murderer yet?" Henry had come down the stairs way too quietly and Emma leapt at his soft voice **right** behind her.

"Jesus!" Mary Margaret frowned. "I mean—nothing yet kid. Just a floating gnome and a helluva couple of alibis. Did you guys know** every** single nun was at Granny's last night?"

All three long term Storybrooke residents were unimpressed.

"The hamburgers are great," David said.

"And it's really roomy there," Mary Margaret added.

"Everyone loves Granny's," Henry insisted in an eerily toneless voice.

Sure. Granny's was great, and cheaper than most fast food places. It was just…weird they all went but the dead one and her sisters. And weird that no one seemed surprised.

She settled into the stool beside Mary Margaret and took her half-done wine, finishing it off in two gulps. "So I'm the only one that finds it weird?"

All three of them shrugged. "The hamburgers are **really** great," Henry said—imitating his grandfather.

Emma chuckled and ruffled his hair, "I gotta get you out more."

Mary Margaret frowned again, "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's just—" All three of them look like she'd insulted their dog or something. It struck her that out of the whole damn town she was probably the most well travelled (if you didn't count magical lands usually only found in books). "I once had a hamburger down in New Mexico so good I dreamed about it years later. **Dreams** because of a hamburger. And Granny's is good, but there's only about one thing there I dream about."

Henry tilted his head, "What?"

"Ru—rhubarb pie. Granny's rhubarb pie is top notch."

David and Henry agreed but Mary Margaret scowled like she knew that wasn't the pie Emma dreamt of. She reached past her for the wine bottle and refilled the glass.

Taking another big gulp of wine she looked over at Henry. The little guy had climbed up into the third stool and was thinking too deeply—doing that little grimace he must have learned from Regina.

"What's up," she asked.

"I should see more of the world."

David did something between a gasp and a snort and Mary Margaret tried to smile warmly like she was encouraging him but it just came off as frigid.

"Well," Emma tried not to look at the two of them, "We could go sometime. Where you thinking about?"

"China."

She was a big fan—though she didn't think the kid knew she'd been there. "I was thinking something closer first. Maybe Boston?"

"I've already **been** to Boston."

"You went from the bus station to Emma's," Mary Margaret said. "You should see the entire city."

Emma wasn't going to point out that Mary Margaret had seen even less of Boston and wouldn't be going any time soon. Part of the curse still wrapped around the town, and anyone affected by it couldn't leave without losing their memories.

Sometimes when Mary Margaret or David were shooting her the maternal/paternal puppy dog eyes she thought about punting them over the city line just to have a break.

Knowing that Regina would approve and the rest of the town would be horrified was the only thing keeping her from doing it most nights.

"You could check out Harvard," David suggested. "That's in Boston right?"

"You sound like Regina—no we'll do the aquarium. Maybe catch some improv or something and then gorge on lobster rolls and oysters."

Mary Margaret tilted her head, her eyes placid and a little wounded, "You're making it sound like something you'll do this weekend or the next?"

Emma shrugged, "Why not? Nothing's stopping us." Besides the murder investigation. And everyone getting jealous of their road trips. And Regina. Emma was pretty sure taking a kid who wasn't technically **legally** her's across state lines without permission was illegal. "What do you say kid? Next month you and me and Boston for the weekend?"

"Overnight?" Henry's eyes bugged out.

"Why not? I've still got my apartment." That she needed to deal with. Sheriff's pay wasn't as lucrative as bail-bonds person pay and she was gonna have to get into her savings if she didn't get off her butt and find a subletter soon.

Mary Margaret, trying not to be Debbie Downer, but failing, asked, "What about Regina? If she finds out you're taking him—"

David set down plates in front of everyone. He'd cooked chicken breasts as big as his own hands on the skillet. He'd poured something that started life as Campbell's Cream of Mushroom on top to hide the black bits. But Emma could still see a healthy stretch of char peaking through the sauce on hers.

Reaching for her fork she said, "I've got to go do an interview with her tomorrow. I'll just ask."

"She won't like that."

"I don't think she's gonna be mad about a weekend trip next month Mary Margaret. And if she's that worried she can tag along. Right kid?"

He grimaced like his grandmother and stabbed his chicken heartily. The rift that had formed after his mom had accidentally poisoned him hadn't been healed. Even though he'd brought her back to life and been by her bed almost every day of her coma.

Apparently it was a lot easier loving people when one of you was near death.

####

Henry and David were out the door the next morning while Emma was still wiping the sleep from her eyes and trying to crack her persistently uncrackable neck.

Mary Margaret was up too and wordlessly put a mug of coffee into Emma's hands when she slumped onto a stool in the kitchen.

"Long night?"

"Henry's a furnace and kicks in his sleep."

Mary Margaret winced in sympathy.

"He's pretty excited about the stable huh?"

"Seems that way. He's been begging your father to teach him since you and I were over There. This should be good for them. Bonding." Mary Margaret said it so hopefully.

"He wanted to ride a horse so bad why didn't he ask Regina?"

Mary Margaret wrapped both her hands around her own mug of coffee and brought it to her lips. "I don't know," she said between sips. "And I don't think David knows Regina can ride either."

"You never told him?"

"Never came up."

A lot of things never came up. As far as Emma could tell her "parents" were basically newlyweds. They'd been married less than a year when they had her and were still in that "love guides us through all problems" phase. Emma was familiar with that phase. Many an idiot new spouse had put up their life savings to bail someone out and then had to watch as the loved one ran and Emma had to hunt them down.

Mary Margaret and David struck her as slightly less naive (though that could have been because of her own dumb optimism). Yet a lot of stuff slipped in between the cracks. Neither of them actually **talked** to the other about Mary Margaret's missing heart.

Or Regina.

Or having Emma and Henry crowd their open floor plan loft and effectively ruin any chance of intimacy.

Which was another thing—

Emma had **no** plans to pry. Ever.

**EVER**.

But she was pretty sure they hadn't done…stuff since the curse had broken. Both of them were extra crabby whenever Hook's bird mentioned sex or Mulan and Aurora walked by with their arms touching.

After showering and seeing Mary Margaret off for the final day of set up before the clam bake Emma made her way across town to Regina's place.

Some homes had changed since the Curse. People didn't maintain their lawns or prune their plants or rake the leaves that were starting to fall.

Regina wasn't one of those people. She'd been in a coma for a week and stuck in the hospital for something like six more and she still had the greenest lawn and the best looking trees and bush—

And Emma's mind went there.

She shuddered and parked her cruiser on the street in front. The door opened wide as she clomped up the steps, but instead of Regina in her neat little pants suit or pencil skirt it was Hook, wearing pants again, but his shirt open to the navel, his hair in sticking up in every direction and his hook gone. The ornate sleeve of his shirt was pulled over the end of the residual limb. He leaned against the door and tried to look rakish.

"Ms. Swan, to what do I owe the pleasure?"

She'd gotten really good at ignoring his come ons. She didn't even have to glare this time. "Where's Regina?"

"Out."

"And you're hear because?"

"Hey hot mama!"

A flurry of feathers that should be plucked and stuffed in a pillow case landed on Hook's shoulder. That god damned bird. It tilted its head and seemed to **gaze** at her. Like it was human.

She resisted the urge to draw her gun and shoot it off his shoulder.

"Well," Hook said, "Aren't you going to say hello?"

The bird nipped his ear and he grinned.

"No, but I might roast the thing for Thanksgiving if you're not careful. Where's Regina?"

He rubbed the bird's head, "Why is everyone always threatening to eat him? Were you lot not fed enough as children? Do you have no understanding of how tough and gamey parrot is?"

"Hook."

He chucked the bird under its beak with his knuckle. And talked to it like it was a baby, "I won't let them eat you."

"Hook!"

"You're short tempered," he observed.

"Sexually frustrated," the bird squawked.

"I swear to God, both of you—"

"Regina squeezed some orange juice before she left. Fancy a cup?" He didn't wait for her answer, just turned around and padded into the kitchen, his bare feet slapping loudly against the wood floor. His bird flew over Emma's head and out the door. Torn between wanting to chase it down and put it out of everyone's misery, and the need to find Regina so they could go talk to whoever the hell that gnome claimed lived on Gingerbread Lane Emma had to eventually settle on following Hook into the house and kicking the door shut behind her.

She noted the blankets pooled on the couch and the dirty boots and long coat lying on the floor.

"Late night," she called ahead.

Hook was busy in the kitchen, using his one hand to pour juice and his other arm to hold the cup steady. Watching him she was reminded that the hook wasn't a hand and he didn't have magic to supplement the thing. In his undone shirt standing at the isle pouring juice he looked completely…average.

"Regina caught me eating all her good bread and prosciutto last night and forced me to help her make cider." He pushed the glass of juice over with the end of his arm. She saw a peak of the scarred limb mostly hidden by his shirt sleeve. "Apparently I'm a greedy thief and I have an alcohol problem."

"You're giving pre-Curse Leroy a run for his money in one of those departments."

"Not much else for a pirate to do in a town like this."

"You could become a fisherman."

"I'm one of the most infamous pirates to ever live. I do not **fish**."

Emma tried the juice. It was tart and satisfyingly pulpy. Almost like biting into an orange. "Coast guard?"

"I hung up my white hat a long time ago and have no plans to put it back on."

"I don't know what to tell ya Hook. Unless you want to start stealing movies online there's not a lot of pirating to do in Storybrooke. You're gonna have to reevaluate your life I guess."

He rolled his eyes, "God, you're as bad as those three." The other Four Thieves. A name Emma was a 100% sure they'd given themselves to sound cool.

"Difference being they **care** what happens to you."

He considered his orange juice and raised his shoulders a fraction in a half shrug. Emma could see the hint of a tattoo on his chest, masked by his shirt and swirls of chest hair. She wondered what kind of tattoo a real pirate out of a storybook had. Was it his dead girlfriend's name? A picture of his ship?

He noticed her staring and raised an eyebrow, "See anything you like?"

"No," she fired back without thinking. His amusement didn't even waver. "Now where the hell's Regina? We're supposed to go talk to some cookie man or evil witch or something and I wanted to get it done sooner rather than later."

"She had to run an errand. Told me to tell you to meet her at the stables."

Emma's heart thumped twice as fast briefly. "The…stables?"

He nodded and sipped his juice.

"Any reason—why—why the stables?"

"Maybe she wanted to take one of her hell beasts out for a ride. How should I know?"

"She didn't say?"

"Oh yes, she went into avid detail because she and I discuss every minute detail of our lives and then braid each other's hair."

Emma finished the rest of her orange juice and pushed back from the counter. If she drove fast, with the sirens on, maybe she'd get to the stable before Regina, because if she got there afterwards she **really** didn't want to see what would happen.

####

She didn't beat Regina there. Instead she pulled in, gravel shooting out from beneath her tires and a billow of dust trailing her, just as Regina was getting out of her car.

The other woman crossed her arms and eyed Emma as she parked. "I don't think the sheriff is supposed to speed that fast," she remarked when Emma got out of her car.

"I had my sirens on most of the way."

"That might make it worse."

Regina was dressed a little more Enchanted Foresty than usual. Or maybe just horsewomany. She was wearing tight riding pants and knee high boots. Her blouse was one of her normal tailored mayor blouses, but the blazer was full on preppy horsewoman.

She was just missing the crop. Emma felt poor just looking at her.

"Why are we here," she asked—hopefully deflecting the conversation from her speeding, or David's truck at the other end of the parking lot.

"Gingerbread Lane is an old unpaved logging road and Gauvin and Hwin need to be taken out for a ride. I thought we might kill two birds with one stone." She looked over Emma's shoulder, her face impassive, "Why is Charming's truck here?"

"He…"

She raised an eyebrow.

Emma sighed, "He's teaching Henry how to ride a horse."

Instead of being angry or sad Regina just snorted. "Charming? Really?"

"Henry's been asking apparently."

"Of course. Why ask his mother when there's a former prince around?" She wasn't actually expecting an answer from Emma, and said to herself, "Apparently I failed at teaching him about the dangers of assuming based on gender."

"Pretty sure that's just society failing."

Regina huffed in a way that indicated that, no, **Regina** was the one that failed. It was endearing.

"So you're not…planning on turning David into a toad or anything?"

Regina sighed, "Somehow I think Henry would be offended by me turning his grandfather into an amphibian. So I'll just be resigned. For now."

The qualifier didn't completely ease Emma's concern.

Regina walked back around to the trunk of her car and popped it open and Emma came closer to make sure she wasn't pulling out a shotgun or something equally murderous.

She wasn't.

"What's with the saddle?"

"I had to go pick it up from Donkeyskin's shop. I needed a new one."

"You couldn't just magic it?"

She eyed Emma before she reached in and pulled the saddle out, "Magic is no match for quality leather working. Besides," she sniffed, "with the curse broken the town's economy isn't maintained by magic. She needed the work."

That was true. The cannery was shuttered about a week after Emma "saved" the town.

Regina shoved the saddle into Emma's chest and she had to scramble to grab it while Regina turned back around and started pulling other horse looking junk from the car.

"She know your dusted her dad?"

"That's why she gave me a 15% discount on the tack."

"How gracious."

"She's grateful, not stupid." She paused, "Or **as** stupid. The curse apparently added a few points to her IQ." Emma faintly remembered a story about Bluebeard's daughter disguising herself to get into Regina's palace, and then traipsing around her room in full on royal gowns.

"Lucky her."

Regina piled all the other horse junk on top of the saddle and Emma grunted and tried not to drop anything, spreading her legs a little to improve her balance. "Why am I carrying this?"

"Because you are here."

Emma glared.

"And because I need to speak with the stable manager. Take that down to Gauvin's stall would you?"

Emma could have fought her on it—particularly as she felt like a pack mule, but Regina was already headed towards the attached office and she would have had to jog to catch up with her and throw all the leather good at her.

It seemed rude.

She wrestled with all leather. Something—a bridle? Reins?—she had no clue—dropped and she caught it with the toe of her boot. She had to squat and grab the metal part of it with her pinky and then shuffle towards the stable.

As she picked up speed she got a better handle on all the junk and by the time she was stepping into the stables and looking down a long corridor of stalls she was no longer in danger of dropping Regina's crap.

The stables hadn't seen a whole lot of use during the Curse and even maintained by magic they were a little run down from thirty years of disuse. Tired looking. All the white paint was dirty and cracked and only half the stalls had animals in them.

A sign tacked to a cork board offered riding lessons on the cheap. It looked new enough to be put up post-Curse. Probably put up by some prince looking for some extra cash.

Hopefully **not** the prince she lived with.

Or maybe it was a knight?

She was pretty sure the Enchanted Forest had had knights.

David was leaning against the door of one of the stalls closest to the entrance. A travel mug of coffee was dangling from his finger and must have been the reason he looked as chipper as he did.

"Thought you had a meeting," he said, not taking his eye off the inside of the stall.

"Meeting moved to here."

She balance the saddle on the stall door and looked in. Henry was standing on a stool brushing an ugly paint horse's coat and trying not to look self conscious.

"What are you guys up to?"

David pointed his mug at Henry. "Teaching him how to ride."

Emma raised an eyebrow but didn't ask the obvious question: How brushing a horse taught the kid anything.

Henry looked up from his mind-numbingly boring work and a big grin split his face. "Mom!" He dropped his brush, hopped off the stool and ran up to the door. It was still weird to hear him call her that. Felt kind of like someone walking across her grave.

But she smiled back. It would be shitty not to. "Hey kid."

His small hand reached up to touch the supple leather of the saddle's seat. His eyes were wide, "Is this for me?"

"No idea. Regina just had me bring it in."

His face brightened further, "My mom's here?" It was a lot different then when Emma had first shown up in town and he'd scowled at every mention of Regina. Since she was now the cool bad ass witch who defeated evil with giant rubble monsters he was thawing. The hurt hadn't been erased. Just…eased.

"She's talking to the stable manager. We've got to go talk to someone about that murder and she thought we should ride out there."

"She's not just poofing you," David asked.

"Guess not."

"Does my mom even know how to ride a horse?"

"Of course I do, and I probably know more about it then your **grandfather**." Regina had arrived with the stubby stable manager in tow. Her lips were curled up into a half snarl that had Emma, David and Henry all wilting. She nodded at the stable manager, and the little round woman waddled quickly down the corridor with another saddle grasped in her meaty hands.

Then Regina irritation seemed to reverse course. Her sneer softened into something uneasy but kind. "I used to ride quite often once upon a time."

"Why'd you stop," Henry asked.

"Queens don't go riding bareback through the country side."

"No instead they—" Emma tapped David's stomach with her elbow and he shut up.

Regina caught David's retreat and Emma's elbow. Her eyes sharply focused on the two of them even as the rest of her was directing a maternal smile at Henry. "If I'd known you wanted to learn I would have been happy to teach you." There was no hint of chastisement in her voice, but a touch of the hurt that put crow's feet at the corner of her eyes.

Henry missed it. "It's okay. Gramps is teaching me."

"Ah." She frowned, her dark eyes taking in Henry, his tennis shoes, his brush, and the pristine looking horse. "How exactly?" The hurt dissolved into haughty judgement and she pegged David with an annoyed glare, "You know teaching horseback riding actually requires sitting **astride** a horse?"

"I'm teaching him to respect the horse first."

"And I supposed you'd teach him to drive by having him wash your car?"

"Yes."

Regina'd been gearing up for a lecture, but David's terse response stopped her dead. She looked surprised—but not really mad. "Oh," she nodded, "I guess that makes sense."

Emma was grateful she hadn't had David teaching **her** how to drive as a kid. She preferred stealing cars to gently washing them with a giant sponge. And he definitely would have been the dad having her use shammies and doing two coats of wax.

"Perhaps when your grandfather is done teaching you the absolute basics we could go for a ride together?"

"Sure," Henry said—a little wary. Was it always gonna be like that between him and his adoptive mom? Would she be asking him to come by for Christmas and he'd look nervous before agreeing?

It had to suck knowing your kid didn't trust you. Even if Regina didn't seem offended by his tentativeness.

She was just smiling again. That warm and totally **genuine** one that made something in the pit of Emma fidget. "And maybe, if you stick with it, we could see about having a saddle made for you?"

"We don't want to spoil him," Emma murmured.

"A good saddle isn't spoiling him. It's making sure we have grandchildren one day."

Emma had never seen her kid really blush or seen Regina sound quite like a **mom** until that moment. Henry's face turned bright red and the mortification a kid could only achieve because of their parents being jerks blossomed on his face.

David coughed and ducked his head, his fist over his mouth to hide an amused little grin.

"Mom," Henry gasped.

"Oh don't be embarrassed. You're with family here, and it's something you **do** need to think of if you're going to be riding regularly. Sterility in male riders is very real."

Emma had heard something similar, but, "I thought that was just because of the jeans cowboys wear?"

"It also has to do with how a man rides and what kind of saddle he's on."

David nodded, "She has a point."

"And **you** should probably ignore it," Regina glanced at David, "or Henry will wind up with a very young aunt or uncle."

Emma clapped her hands, "And we're done with this conversation!" David and Henry were matching shades of red. She pulled all the saddle toward her with one hand and dragged Regina away by the bicep with the other. "We are now going to leave you to forget this conversation ever happened."

Henry and David both glowed with the kind of gratitude that made Emma actually feel like the "Savior" she was always told she was.

####

The woman's horsemanship had not improved.

Regina should have expected that. Almost three years for her had only been the span of an afternoon for Emma. She hadn't had a chance to get lessons, or even just **sit** on a horse.

So she sat very rigidly on Hwin, her legs sticking out to stay clear of the mare's flanks and the two ends of the reins clutched in one hand so she could cling to the horn of the saddle with the other. It was a very plain western saddle meant for long days spent horseback and working cattle—but it was significantly more forgiving to a rider than the lean and sparse saddle Regina had designed. It was also too big and Emma kept scooting back and forth to find a way to balance herself.

"Relax," Regina called in a soothing tone. "You're not gonna fall off."

"Easy for you to say queen who mounts the world."

She whipped her head around, "What?"

Emma tried to wave her off, slipped and grabbed the horn again. "Nothing. TV show humor. Get HBO."

"Do I look like I'm made of money?"

Emma's plaintive stare suggested that she did.

Tugging on her own reigns, Regina slowed down so she could ride beside Emma. The old logging road was had grown narrow from years of disuse, with gnarled branches of trees reached out to grab at their clothes, but it was still just wide enough for them to ride side by side. Sometimes they had to ride so close Regina's knee would brush against Emma's.

It was nice—until Emma would slow down or speed up to end the contact.

This time Regina reached out and put her hand on top of Emma's. She ignored the daggers shot her way. Emma wasn't a big toucher.

She couldn't feel the warmth of Emma through her thin doeskin gloves, just the hard tendons in her hand as she continued to hold onto the saddle horn. "It isn't easy to fall out of that saddle Emma, and Hwin isn't going to buck or bolt."

"No, she's going to walk. Or trot. Or **canter**."

"If you're that nervous you can sit behind me. I'm better than you just holding that horn like a newborn."

More daggers. Flirting with Emma Swan was something new—an experiment suggested by Aurora—and the subject of the experiment was **not** fond of it. "I'm fine on my own horse," Emma said dryly.

"Well, then relax. My back is hurting just watching you."

She did relax, just a little, and Regina let go, her fingers immediately missing the contact. She balled her hand into a fist and her gloves squeaked softly.

"I still don't see why you couldn't just poof us," Emma grumbled.

"The horses needed a stretch."

"Which they could have had **not** while we're on police business. Magic would have been faster."

"You could have used your sirens to get to the convent faster yesterday, but you didn't. Why?"

"It's an abuse of power."

Regina stared.

"—What? Really?"

She raised her chin, enjoying Emma's surprise. "Just because we **can** do something doesn't mean we should."

"This coming from the walking id."

"I told you Emma, I've changed."

Emma ignored her, even as the faintest of blushes colored her cheeks, "So who we talking to today? I'm assuming some kind of former cookie?"

"No."

"Loaf of bread?"

"What—why would you even—no, a woman."

Emma groaned, "In a gingerbread house?"

"The very same."

"But I thought the mechanic's kids killed her."

"They burned her alive, which, as you well know, isn't always enough to kill a witch."

"What, she eat a peach like your mom?"

"No. She healed herself even as she burned."

####

The house, thank Christ, was **not** made out of cookies and candy. It was a creepy cabin, the kind made out of the fat trunks of trees and with a big wobbly chimney jutting out from above rotten looking wooden shingles. A thin plume of smoke drifted out the top and somewhere far away a raven crowed.

It was hard not to feel a chill seeing the place, nestled in a cove of old growth forest that hid most of the sun's bright light and made everything colder than the early part of fall should be.

"If she's so bad why'd you bring her over?"

"Some monsters shouldn't be left to their own devices."

"Incestuous serial killers get stranded, but cannibalistic kid snatchers snag a ticket?"

"Most of her power was lost when those children shoved her in her own oven. What's left of her is dangerous for what she **knows**, not what she can do," Regina paused, an obnoxious knowing grin on her lips, "Though I wouldn't get too close to her kitchen."

"Cute."

She shrugged.

Both horses **shivered** the closer they got to the cabin. Like they could feel the evil emanating from within. Regina's stallion pawed at the muddy road and shook his head in protest. Regina had to dig in with her heels and manipulate the four reins. She gritted her teeth silently as she pressed her horse forward.

The one Emma was on was more placid, but she reached a point where she wouldn't go further and Emma wasn't about to try and force it. With her luck the horse would bolt and the two of them would end up in New Hampshire by sundown.

"Let me talk," Regina commanded quietly, "and whatever you do, don't agree to anything." She dismounted smoothly and swiftly enough that Emma felt jealous. The chain of Regina's locket flashed on her neck as she moved and Emma's locket burned briefly.

As she made her own, considerably less graceful, dismount the front door of the cabin creaked open. The hinges screeched and birds in trees overhead fluttered away, casting the surrounding forest in silence.

A woman emerged. Her whole body was covered in wet looking scars and she was hunched over, as if the burned skin had permanently contorted her. One withered hands held a shawl closed around her shoulders and her other hand, unmarred by burns, was extended before her. Blue blank eyes roved sightlessly. The unblemished hand rose shakily to her mouth. She licked her lips and smiled. "I…smell…a witch."

"Then perhaps you should invest in deodorant dear."

Regina's snark didn't phase the other woman. She hobbled forward, limping heavily. "Not just a witch—" She sniffed the air, her head bobbing dramatically. "A girl. An orphan."

Not true. Emma…Emma had parents now. Sure they were the same age and one was missing an eye and the other was missing her heart, but they were parents who **loved** her. Parents who cared. Parents who didn't make her pay rent.

Involuntarily her hand touched her stomach as if too soothe the empty pit that formed at the word orphan. It was habit—the word always clanged painfully around her insides.

The witch was still grinning, and even though she was clearly blind she seemed to be looking directly at Emma. She stepped back in alarm, her shoulder bumping against her horse's nose.

Then dark hair filled her vision as Regina stepped between her and the witch. "**She** is not your concern," she said archly.

The witch tried to look over Regina's shoulder, craning her neck as far as her misshapen body would allow. "She smells delicious."

"And she's about twenty years too old for you. You like them young remember?"

"I can make an exception."

"I didn't bring her for you."

Those milky eyes wandered over the general area of Regina's head. "Then why?"

"She's the sheriff, and we have questions for you."

"Your…granddaughter. How lovely."

Regina glared—which didn't do much good. "If you want to start this conversation the wrong way you're doing a wonderful job Cecily."

"You've come for me haven't you?"

"Yes," Emma said, "But—"

"You can't arrest me. What happened in the other lands remains in the other lands."

Her story was one of the few from Henry's book that Emma bothered to remember. A creepy witch eating orphaned kids? It was gonna stick in her head. And at that moment, watching the woman just standing there with bleeding gums leaving her teeth yellowed and long and sharp looking. She wanted to arrest her. Or kill her. To do **something**. She could hear those teeth chewing on flesh.

"I've been good here," the witch protested. "Just suckling pigs."

Something behind the house squealed and Emma remembered the name slapped on all the pork at the grocery store. She was going to be sick. "You're where they get the meat for the grocery store?"

The witch's smile grew. Her gums had receded leaving each tooth looking longer than it should. "Just the young bits."

"As soon as it hits puberty she won't touch it."

Emma was going to be **really** sick.

The witch waved to a path that led behind her cabin, "Would you care to see?"

Regina sighed, "No, we'd care for answers Cecily. Stop trying to distract us."

Cecily (Emma thought the name wasn't nearly German and evil enough sounding) ignored Regina, and hobbled along the path. Regina buried her hands in her jacket pockets and followed. Emma joined her and fought the urge to draw her gun and use it right then. The witch turned around briefly, like she could see Emma's thoughts.

"The trick to succulent meat is tenderness."

Emma kept seeing fat little children in an oven with apples stuck in their mouths. She shuddered. Regina brushed past her, following the other witch closely, and again putting herself between them.

"I produce the most tender meat you've ever tasted. You can cut it with your thumb." She wagged her thumb in illustration.

Coming around the corner of the house Emma was slammed with the smell of animal. It was as bad as the feedlots she'd driven by as she made way through the Texas panhandle on her way between Arizona and Tallahassee. The stench was unmistakable. Hundreds of animals pressed into a small space. Shit and blood and the mere press of bodies producing a unique perfume that could make the unprepared retch.

Regina produced a scarf from her pocket and held it to her nose. Emma just tried to hold her breath.

The barn they stepped into was poorly lit, the only light coming from sunlight streaming through boards. Full grown pigs rutted about in muck in large pens and piglets were all pressed close together in stalls—so close they couldn't move.

A ploy to fatten them up.

"How are my pretties today," Cecily cooed.

She flipped a switch near the door and the barn was bathed in stark green yellow white light. Emma squinted.

"Cecily." Regina's voice was muffled by the scarf in front of her face.

"Hold on, I need to feed them. I have to prepare the fattest today."

"The grocery stores are still buying from you," Emma asked.

"The people of Storybrooke have developed a taste for my meat."

Regina actually looked ashamed.

"Snow White herself is coming by for piglets this evening." Cecily reached into one of the stalls and loving stroked the ears of a small pig. "They'll roast them on the spit tomorrow."

Emma tried to reconciled the 4th grade teacher who had been her friend with the heartless princess that would do business with a cannibal to make a **clam** **bake** special.

"Naturally she goes and turns a simple clam bake into a pig roast," Regina sighed, "but I don't care about that right now, we're here about Merryweather."

"She's dead." Cecily smiled, but whether it was because she found an appealing piglet or because of Merryweather's fate Emma didn't know.

Emma rolled her eyes.

"You know more than that," Regina insisted. "I seem to recall you eating a few of her sisters."

"They were freshly hatched and I caught them fair and square."

Emma was going to need to disinfect her entire **body** when she got home. "You **ate** fairies?"

She smacked her lips. "The newborn ones are nearly as sweet as children."

Regina rolled her eyes like it was old news, "And Merryweather and her sisters never forgave you."

"All the more reason **they'd** tried to kill **me**, not the other way around." She turned towards Emma again, taking a deep breath. "You smell almost as sweet as they did."

Emma stepped back. Her locket chilling burning with cold against her skin and warring with the her nausea for the most unpleasant feeling.

Regina jammed her scarf back into her pocket and stalked forward, "The gnome told me you know something about her murder. Now stop wasting my time and start talking or I'll fire up your stove and shove you into it."

She was blind, hunched, and could barely walk, but Cecily hobbled right into Regina's personal space, peering up despite being completely blind. "Always quick with empty threats Regina."

She glared down at the witch. "I burned you once," she sneered.

"But I hear you've changed. What would our succulent smelling sheriff think if she saw you torturing me?"

Regina loomed over her, her face only a few inches from Cecily's. She spoke clearly, enunciating each word, "Ask the gnome."

A muscle in the witch's face quivered.

The room suddenly turned quiet. The pigs turned lethargic in their pens. The stench of the barn seemed to…shift. The space became warmer and the stench turned pleasant. Like something roasting.

No.

There was spice.

Warm and toasty, like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Buttery.

Ginger.

The whole barn was turning into gingersnaps, the pig shit into chocolate, the straw into spun sugar. The pigs stood immobile. The stark white fluorescent lights overhead flickered and became cozy flames. Icing oozed down the walls. The hard packed dirt floor turned soft and spongy like gingerbread.

Emma cried out in alarm.

Regina crossed her arms, perfectly at ease on the shifting floor. But Emma had to scramble. She reached for the wall and yanked her hand away as icing dripped onto her fingers.

This was freaking— "Stop it," she demanded.

"This place is looking a little underdone," Regina said and then flipping **fire** sprouted up around her feet, scorching the ground and sending up black gouts of smoke that smelled like burned bread.

"You're the one that'll roast Regina."

####

The gun going off put an end to the brewing battle. A single bullet hole was smoking in the spot exactly between Regina and Cecily's feet.

Emma looked very official in the moment. Like a cop on television, her badge glimmering on her waist and her gun held in both hands before her, her eyes steely as she glared over the end of the barrel.

"That's enough," she growled. "The candy land magic bullshit ends now or Cora gets two more cellmates."

"You think you can stop either of us," Cecily actually asked.

Emma's magic. Raw and ineffable flowed out of her, buffeting them both. "I can try."

It was the first time **this** Emma had tapped into her power in Storybrooke, and it exploded out almost in a visible wave that Emma seemed to be completely unaware of. She had no idea how powerful she was. Cecily blanched in horror, her thin frame crumpling in the face of the onslaught. Regina kept standing—the locket scorching between her breasts and the magic moving in and out and around her.

She called Emma's name—sounding breathless even to herself.

Cecily's baked goods horror show subsided and seconds later Emma turned off the faucet to her own power. She blinked—as if she'd surprised herself and looked sheepishly to Regina.

"So," Regina panted, directing her question to Cecily, "Now will you talk?"

"Her power…"

"I know," she glanced at Emma again, "Even if she doesn't. And that's one of the reasons we need to know about Merryweather. We've already got Emma here walking around with a nuclear power plant inside of her. We don't need someone else running around murdering fairies."

"I didn't do it."

"Then why'd the gnome send us to you?"

"He wanted you dead."

"Then he wouldn't have sent me to you."

Cecily shifted her shoulders slightly, accepting that fact. "You know my gift Regina." She hobbled back over to the stalls and once more systematically poking and prodding every piglet within reach. "I see what others can't. Do you know why?"

"I grew up in the Enchanted Forest. I'm aware of the Blind Witches dear. Didn't Rumpel kill your great grandmother?"

"Great-great grandmother. She saw the future and he stole that gift from her."

"The way he tells it she gave it to him."

Emma had lowered her gun and was looking from one witch to the other in confusion. "I'm lost."

"The Blind Witches see what others cannot," Regina explained. "Some saw through disguises and others through lies. Some saw the future. Some saw the past. Cecily here sees—"

"I see intent."

It had always made it difficult to circumvent her. You could never **plan** when dealing with Cecily—as Regina and Maleficent had both learned the hard way.

And as too many children had as well.

More than one child Regina had sent into Cecily's house had died because of it. They'd sneak in and planning to kill her and claim the satchel but would be roasted and eaten instead. It had forced Regina to find younger and younger and more wholesome children for the task. And more impulsive too.

Emma squinted, laboring over that reveal. "So you don't know what I look like, but if I intend to punch you…"

"She can see it. And what does this have to do with Merryweather? Did you see someone planning to murder her?"

"Worse." She grasped a pig by its hind legs and drew it from its pen. The screech was ungodly. Emma turned green with nausea. "I saw a war."

####

War. Big deal. Emma wanted to see war she could watch the news. It was a damn sight better than watching Cecily throw a piglet to the ground and bind its squirming legs.

Regina took Cecily's words more seriously. She was still in that fugue state of hers when her mind was working faster than anyone else's.

"Where," Regina asked, "Who's planning it?"

The blind witch smiled, enjoying the fine film of panic coating Regina's words. "I might tell you. For a price." She tugged a knot into place on the pig's back legs and picked it up again. It squealed and writhed in her surprisingly stable hand.

"You can tell us and not go to jail," Emma groused.

"And my crime? This isn't the Enchanted Forest Sheriff. You can't just lock us away because you don't like our power."

"How about for eating kids? That a good enough reason."

She pulled the pig to the far end of the barn and into a smaller room with white tile walls and floors. "Then I suppose you'll take Regina too." Emma and Regina followed her. "How many did she murder—"

"Name the price," Regina interrupted. She was still in her pensive place. That mayor at town meetings, or the witch intrigued by some new magic.

She stood in the door between that white room and the barn where Emma stood. Emma stepped closer to Regina, lowering her voice, "I thought we weren't making deals."

"**You're** not making deals because you can't tell the difference between an ogre and a giant." Regina didn't take her eyes off the witch, "**I** know what I'm getting into. Name your price Cecily."

Cecily selected a knife from a magnet on the wall. "I want to leave."

"Emma broke the curse, I have no control over what's left."

"No, but Rumpelstiltskin is already plotting his own way out, he has for generations. Learn how he plans to do it and share."

"Done."

No talk about how maybe letting a serial killer lose on the non-magic population of the world was a bad idea. Or plan to actually **get** help from Gold. Cecily asked and Regina promptly answered.

She placed the squirming pig on a slab in the middle of the room, and in one swift, familiar motion, slid her knife through the piglet's neck. It twitched and blood, brighter than any Emma had seen, spilled across the slab. S

Regina took a step into the room. "You'll have your way out. Now who did you see?"

Cecily hung the now limp carcass on a hook. Blood dripped on the tile and started to turn tacky on the knife, forgotten on the slab. It covered the witch's hands and she seemed to marvel at the sensation.

"I saw the war itself. **Bleeding** into this land from all the others. Trickling over on the backs of your victims. Magic," she held up a hand and fire flared in it, burning away the pig's blood, "and its creators," in her other hand the blood formed a globe of liquid that hovered just above her palm, "want to war over **this** world—the last bastion of its kind."

"And Merryweather?"

"She intended to stop it."

####

Emma was coming out of a dream…or a nightmare. She staggered back into the natural light dimmed by the surrounding forest and gaped at it all. She could smell tree sap and freshly turned earth and hear birds over the muffled squeals of the pigs the Blind Witch was butchering. It was the real world. One that made sense.

The barn was something else. Something as bad as the Enchanted Forest. Disjointed and colored all wrong.

Regina followed her out. Her hand brushed Emma's shoulder, "Are you okay?"

She shrugged her off. "Fine." She turned to face Regina, and she kept her eyes only on her, letting the barn itself dissolved into the background, "Except for the part where this had nothing to do with the murder."

Regina raised an eyebrow, "You don't think motive is important?"

"Of course it is. But that," she pointed at the bar, "that's—war!? We're in the middle of Maine where our son is learning to ride horses and we're all stuck going to a clam bake tomorrow. War isn't an option."

"It's rarely a choice for the ones not waging it."

"Right. Exactly. You said Storybrooke is cut off from the other lands. That you're the **only** one who can travel back and forth."

"I am."

"So how's this war supposed to work Regina? Are **you** going to war?"

"No."

"Then what's going on?"

She shook her head, "I don't know. All I've heard are—"

"Are what?"

"Rumors. When we travelled there were rumors, and my mother warned me—"

"Cora knows?"

"The other Cora."

Emma had to walk away. She took long strides back around the cabin towards the horses and away from Regina talking about another Cora.

"Emma—"

"No. No, enough. I'm not—we made it back from the Enchanted Forest—alive! And that's enough okay? I don't need wars and factions and whole other timelines!"

"You ask—"

"Enough!"

Emma shouting struck Regina dumb.

The silence of the forest pervaded their conversation and even the squeals of pigs and chirps of birds seemed to disappear.

It was just Emma and Regina. Magic and all the insanity of it and normalcy. Facing off. Until…

Regina looked…**pained**. "Denying it won't make any of it go away."

"It's working for Mary Margaret and David." It was a cheap comment and Emma knew it. Her eyes were wet—with frustration for sure—and she wiped at them.

Regina tried to console her with a weak smile, but it came off like a frown. "Merryweather was murdered because she knew about a war I've only heard whispers of. Whether it can come to Storybrooke or not is irrelevant." It was an olive branch. Regina partitioning all the crazy into little easier to swallow bites. "Whoever murdered her believed. That was enough."

"Her sisters didn't know anything. I asked the Mother Superior and—"

Regina stepped close again. Her voice more gentle than it had any right to be. Like she wasn't talking to Emma, but someone she actually cared about. "She may be part of this."

Which meant only one, really, really bad conclusion. "We're not just dealing with murder. It's conspiracy."

"Glad you figured that out." David the former gnome and current city employed groundskeeper, stood between them and the horses, his short arms crossed over his large belly and his bearded chin jutting out in challenge.

Emma asked the obvious question, "Where the hell did you come from?"

He sniffed, "I burrowed."

The shift from empathetic Regina to wicked queen was so fast Emma got emotional whiplash. She stepped in between Emma and David and grinned savagely. "Come for another go troll?"

"I'm a **gnome**."

"Not in this land."

His cheeks turned as red as his hat. "I came for revenge."

"And I said no revenge," Emma shouted over Regina's shoulder.

The gnome and Regina both made her feel five and actually rolled their eyes, **in unison**.

"So what? You dig your way out here," Regina pantomimed a dog digging a hole, "and just **demand** you vengeance?"

"My original plan was to turn you into a tree. That blind bitch in there hates you as much as I do. She wouldn't tell a soul and in this forest," he surveyed the surrounding trees, "it'd be **years** before they found you."

"Quaint little plan for murder. How were you going to do that? The sheriff's standing right here."

"She wasn't supposed to be." His lower lip stuck out in a pout. "You couldn't have stayed at your desk eating donuts?"

"Nope."

He shrugged, "So they'll find her body on the edge of town in a few days and you'll have disappeared. That story will write itself."

He was a confident little fucker.

Regina laughed, "Of course. **You** will murder the **Savior**."

"Thanks," Emma muttered.

Regina crossed her arms defiantly, "But that still leaves me. How do you expect to do it? Your magic can't even affect the pansies in this world."

He held up an acorn, "With this."

Regina's amused and regal smirk quickly turned into a frown. A kind of worried frown that made Emma's fingers twitch. Was she allowed to pull a gun on a former gnome wielding an acorn? He grinned devilishly.

"I folded quite a bit of magic into this. Even borrowed some from old friends."

"For that to work you'd need power—"

"From dozens of sorcerers, wizards and magic creatures." He held it up to the sunlight and inspected it proudly. "I've only been working on it for the last twelve hours, but enough people were clamoring to help put you down that it should be potent enough."

Emma wanted to ask for what, because it had to be pretty bad if Regina was eying a tiny nut nervously and her two traitorous horses were giving the stand off a wide berth.

But the bastard little gnome threw the acorn and Regina raised her hands to—magic it or something—and Emma was an idiot. She reached out and **caught** the little fucker. Snatching the nut out of midair with reflexes honed by dodging old drunks' punches.

The acorn chucker and Regina both stared at her with equal measures of surprise—only rooted in very different emotions. David seemed delighted that she'd caught it, and confused, and maybe scared.

Regina just seemed horrified.

"What did you do!"

Also furious.

Emma wasn't sure **what** she'd done. Evil acorns had been thrown and she'd caught them. She looked down at her hand, it was still balled into a fist and as much as she wanted to drop the acorn her fingers wouldn't move.

The gnome tried to walk away and Regina, without taking her eyes off Emma, lashed out. Vines and branches screamed out of the trees and wrapped around him, again and again until he was in a cocoon of greenery. It bobbed overhead, and the two horses both looked up at it curiously.

Regina kept staring. She yanked her doeskin glove off her hand with her teeth and grabbed Emma's fist. The bandages she still had on her hand tickled Emma's knuckle as Regina's fingers tried to pry Emma's fist open.

The cut from Gold's knife had been deep, and her fingers were still clumsy. When David was properly bound she yanked her other glove off and tried to use both her hands.

"Are you insane?"

Emma tried a weak explanation, "It was an acorn?"

"From David the Gnome! Master of Forests! Builder of Trees! He turned his **wife** into a tree."

Emma thought she ran up a mountain and turned herself into a tree as a metaphor for death or something. "To be fair, David the Gnome is a lot friendlier on TV."

"He actually outlined his plan for murder while we stood here."

"He's one of the town drunks and spent yesterday floating around town like a balloon. Excuse me for not taking his threats seriously."

Regina grabbed Emma by the wrist and stuck her balled up fist in her face. "And now? Serious enough for you?"

Why yes. Yes it was.

"Why does my skin look like bark?"

"Because you caught an acorn and are turning into a tree."

One of the horses whinnied. It sounded like a laugh. Emma scowled.

Regina snapped her fingers, "Focus Emma."

"I am!" She looked down and watched the bark spread. Little twigs with little leaves sprouted from her knuckles. More of her turned rigid. "There's an easy fix for this right?"

"If he'd tried to do it with just his regular magic yes. But the whole point of the acorn is—"

"Yeah?"

"It's a curse."

"Isn't that your expertise?"

She tried to sound a lot more hopeful than she was feeling. She was losing sensation in all her extremities. The spreading bark, maybe owing to some weird gnome sense of propriety, spread over her clothes rather than under them.

So she was gonna be a tree, but she wouldn't be naked.

Jesus Christ.

Regina prodded the bark with her fingers. "I don't know. I—I'm used to sleeping curses and ones that ruin the lives of my enemies."

"Being a tree qualifies as life ruined Regina."

"I know," she snapped, "but technically not in the same way."

"Well, yea for technicalities. Have fun taking Henry to visit his mom the mighty oak."

"I think you're," she winced, "an apple tree."

"If I die I want my remains turned into a bat and the gnome beat to death with it."

"Not a problem," Regina promised grimly.

"Okay," Emma tried to stretch and make herself taller, hoping it would give her more time. "Let's look at options. If I become a tree you know where I am and can research and fix it possibly."

Regina weighed that, "Maybe," she ran a hand through her hair, mussing it up, "but maybe not. Gnome magic is about becoming one with the land. It tends to be permanent."

"Tends. Not always? So you get with Gold or the Mother Superior or even that creepy bastard Whale and you guys can—"

"Quiet." Regina held up her hand for silence and Emma would have reeled back but she couldn't move much more than her neck anymore.

Regina chewed her lip. She was breathing loudly through her nose and glaring intently—really raking her eyes over the tree that used to be the rest of Emma.

God. She was gonna end up as wood chips in the smoker at Granny's wasn't she?

Regina suddenly set her mouth into a firm line and narrowed her eyes before inhaling through here nose, "I have an idea."

"You have an idea?"

"I do."

"Great."

"It might not work. You're not—" she winced again, "it isn't ideal, but I can try."

The bark had spread to her neck. "Okay. What are you trying?"

Regina reached out—a hand on either side of Emma's face.

Her eyes flew from one hand to the other and back to Regina's face. "Regina?"

"Shut up." She was staring at Emma. Really **staring**. Like she was trying to convince herself of something. She took another deep breath, this time through her mouth. Her tongue darted out and wet her lips. Her hands trembled.

"Regina—now's the time…"

"I know."

Then her finger tips brushed lightly against Emma's skin before moving into her hair. Her palms pressed against Emma's jaws and her thumbs grazed her cheeks. She stepped close enough that her knee must of have brushed against the trunk of the tree that used to be Emma's thigh.

She whispered, "What are you doing?"

"Hopefully saving your life," Regina murmured. Her breath briefly warmed Emma's lips. Then she pressed her own to them.

It was the third kiss.

Not as hungry as the first.

Not as kind as the second.

This kiss was gentle and safe and scared and unfamiliar warmth blossomed inside of Emma, spreading from where their lips met through her veins to her center and out to her fingers and toes. A timid tongue—how could Regina ever even be timid—caressed her lower lip and the warmth kept spreading. Emma's eyes drifted closed, because it just seemed natural and iridescent light shined behind them. Her own lips parted.

Someone sighed softly into an open mouth.

And the acorn fell from Emma's hand, but she didn't notice, because her hand was on Regina's hip and it felt

It felt true.


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's Note: **I don't think most chapters will be as long as this one or the last one. At least I hope so. And a friendly reminder that I am terrible at . Ao3 and Tumblr are both better avenues for questions and concerns.

**Chapter Four**

The hand that fit perfectly on her waist rose to her chest and pushed. They parted, Emma staggering back and Regina trying not to follow.

She forgot how wonderful kissing felt.

How wonderful kissing **her** felt.

They were both panting—Emma as surprised as Regina felt. Their breathing was the breeze through the trees.

Louder.

Regina's locket was pleasantly warm—a source of satisfaction against her breastbone. She could see the matching chain of Emma's locket. It was just below a pulse point that Regina knew from experience would throb beneath her mouth.

Emma ran her tongue across her lips and glared. "What the hell was that?"

"Magic." The purest kind. Something Regina thought she'd never be able to do. Her heart was black, her soul cursed. She was evil.

The cut from Rumpel's blade itched.

"That how you do **all** your spells Regina?"

Emma was pissed, and scared, and still breathing hard. But she had to know what that kiss was, she'd already been apart of one True Love's Kiss. As Regina had learned herself, it wasn't something one could forget. She'd been gray all over and barely conscious and could still remember the way Henry's love had moved through her.

Pure.

The implications of what Regina had just done sent all the blood to her head, forming a dull roar between her ears.

True Love's Kiss.

She's saved someone with a purity of love.

Emma was still panting and her whole body was taunt and one eyebrow was perched waiting for her response.

Regina had to answer. Had to say anything but that truth that had her heart racing and Emma poised to run. "Of course not," she managed a smug grin, "there's usually not so much tongue from the recipient."

Emma turned as red as her jacket.

Regina lashed out out of habit, "I don't know why **you're** blushing. I'm the one that had my tonsils invaded."

Emma was incredulous. "**You** kissed **me**!"

"To save your life. Not—" She waved her hand up and down, motioning at all of Emma, "To get to some 'base' of yours."

"It's first base, and no one out of high school uses that metaphor, and—" she wagged her finger, "you're trying to distract me!"

"Am I?"

Emma took a step towards her. Close enough that Regina could grab her and pull her close. "Why'd you kiss me?"

Because she was supposed to be the before and the Emma Regina loved was the after and she couldn't have one if the other was a tree.

But really she could never have that one. That Emma was gone and this one looked like her and sometimes sounded like her and, God did she kiss like her. Enough to make something inside of Regina hurt a little less—

"Because I've been madly in love with you since the moment you blundered into my life—why do you think?! To break a curse."

Emma took a deep breath, steeling herself for another tact, "Okay, **how**?"

"It was an experiment," to see if True Love's Kiss worked when they weren't **really** the person one loved. "And it worked. The mechanics of it all are beyond your rudimentary understanding, I assure you."

She stared Emma down, daring her to ask for elaboration. Emma wouldn't. Elaboration meant talking about the other Storybrooke and the woman Regina had loved and Emma, like her parents, was **very** fond of sticking her head in the sand and denying truths.

It just wasn't as irritating coming from her instead of Snow White.

Emma said Regina's name warningly. Haphazardly asking for the truth. With a mere look Regina dared her to press the matter. Because she'd tell her everything—force her to understand—all Emma had to do was ask.

A muscle in Emma's jaw flexed. "Right. Of course." She rolled her head and her necked pop. "I guess," she rubbed the back of her neck, "I guess I should say thanks?"

And just like that the kiss was dropped. Swept under the rug with the other Storybrooke, and the locket, and everything on the tip of Regina's tongue that was begging to flow out.

"It'd be nice. What if it had failed and we'd both ended up trees?"

"Would it have been one tree or two?" She was actually curious.

"I've no idea." She glanced up at the cocoon overhead. "I suppose we can always ask the jackass who cast the spell."

Emma stepped closer, almost close enough that they could have touched if either had moved a fraction. She looked up over Regina. "The muffled yelling means he's still alive right?"

Regina sighed, "Yes. For now." She held her hand up like she was reaching for an apple of a tree and squeezed. The cocoon grew smaller and the man inside screamed.

She sounded exasperated, "Regina…"

"He **did** just try to kill at least one of us, and I am absolutely positive no one would miss him."

"He's going to jail—or the hospital. Whichever can hold him and keep him from treeing people."

"Hospital."

"Hospital then. **Alive**."

"Even Snow would have had him killed," Regina argued.

"Maybe, but having seen that world I'd like to **not** put its laws and customs into practice here. So he goes to magic person jail."

"And if he won't change after a time out? You can't just leave him." She couldn't keep herself from glowering, "Locking someone up for eternity is as bad as the chopping block."

Confusion flitted across Emma's face—a measure of curiosity too, but she didn't pry. "He's not Cora," she said instead, "we can just shove him over the city line and walk away."

It was a ruthlessly efficient idea.

Regina approved.

A thought struck her and her lips quirked upwards, "If we deal with too many criminals that way the surrounding towns may start to get crowded."

"Then I'll drive them to Boston and leave them at a shelter."

Regina raised an eyebrow.

Emma shrugged, "My coping method lately is dreaming about shoving people over the line." Her eyes flickered to Regina, "At least the ones it'll work on."

They were still standing close enough that Regina had to resist the urge to just reach up and brush a lock of hair behind Emma's ear. "And the rest of us?"

Her gaze was even, with none of the fear that had been leaking in before David had attacked. But soft too. Tender in another life. "When I figure it out you'll be the first to know."

####

By the time they made it back to the stables, cocooned gnome in tow, David and Henry were gone. Regina poofed the cocoon into the back of Emma's cruiser and used the horses as an excuse of getting out of helping.

"The horses need to be brushed down. I'd leave it to the stable manager, but she's an idiot," she'd said.

"That's a lame excuse Regina."

"Enjoy imprisoning him. And remind the fairies he can't have plants in his room."

It all left Emma with the unenviable task of dealing with the cocoon herself.

A reluctant Mulan agreed to meet her at the hospital, and when she arrived, her cargo emitting muffled shouts and rocking back and forth on the seat, she found her sitting on the back of the other cruiser, drinking a coffee and chatting with Aurora.

Aurora must have finally read the memo about attempting to look professional, because she was wearing her badge for once. It was on a chain, dangling from her neck. Everything else about her still screamed too thoughtful and fashionable. She was wearing leggings and an oversized flannel shirt cinched tight with a wide belt. And she didn't have a gun on. Instead Aurora may have been the only deputy in the whole country that carried a bow and arrows.

Having them both there meant lots of instances where Emma was out of the loop on conversations. But at least out of all the obnoxious paired off couples in town the two of them were the least irritating. It was the way Aurora could say something that would earn a shy smile from Mulan and the way Aurora looked at Mulan when she thought the other woman wasn't looking.

They had an easy rapport, and maybe it was because Mulan wasn't from the Enchanted Forest, but she didn't harp on good and evil and true love as much as everyone else. Aurora happily followed suit.

It definitely had nothing to do with their dry appraisal of the town—that was too Regina-like for comfort.

Emma slid out of her cruiser and hitched her belt. "Two deputies for the price of one? You lose a bet Aurora?"

"I wanted to see the gnome."

Emma waved to the back seat. "Regina trussed him up with half the forest. Not much to see until we take some hedge trimmers to him."

Aurora peeked inside and seemed impressed. "I like the weave she did. Very sturdy."

"Your obsession with textiles is a little insane."

She didn't argue with Emma's observation. She poked the cocoon and sipped her coffee. "Oh," she asked—changing the subject, "did David tell you about the doctor?"

He hadn't mentioned Whale since Emma had sent him after him yesterday, and after finding out none of the living fairy nuns were missing she'd kind of forgotten their suspicions of Whale vivisecting them.

"Should he have?"

"We've started surveillance on him."

Mulan perked up. "How?"

"Webcams."

In town six weeks and she was on her way to being Storybrooke's Big Brother. "That's not legal Aurora. You have to have a warrant."

Aurora scoffed, "I know that. My mother was Judge Andersen's fairy godmother before she turned in her wings."

"Is he the one that trims his hedges naked?"

Mulan shuddered, "Unfortunately."

Aurora continued, "He signed a warrant last night and I set up all the webcams this morning."

Emma yanked the back door of her cruiser open, "Fantastic—and disturbing. Maybe tell me about your Orwellian plot when we're not dealing with a suspect?"

Aurora huffed.

"Where's Regina," Mulan asked—too observant to be legal.

"She stayed back at the stables. You want to grab the other end of him?"

Mulan stared.

"You know you two are competing for worst deputy right? Policing the town isn't just about the jobs you **want** to do."

Mulan sighed and came around, catching the end of the cocoon before it dropped to the ground. She was kind of freakishly strong and could have carried it on her own, but she let Emma take some of the weight. When they were out of Aurora's earshot she leaned over the cocoon and said, "I was staring because you've got something on your face."

Emma tried to rub at her face with her shoulder. "What? What's on there?"

A whisper of a smile graced her deputy's lips. "Looks like lipstick Sheriff."

Emma dropped her half of the gnome on her foot. The pain was actually better than the mortification.

####

After brushing both horses down and fondly watch them eat oats Regina went to Granny's with the vain hope that she'd run into her son out for a post-horse riding cocoa with his grandfather. The elementary school had had a teacher in-service (that Mary Margaret had notably skipped out on) and the streets were unusually saturated with children.

Granny's was a respite. Regina supposed it was owing to the fact that it was owned by werewolves. Children were terrified that Granny and Red would eat them as soon as they came in. Too many stupid adults were too. The place likely survived only on the support of the Charmings and their friends.

And Rumpelstiltskin.

He was sitting at the counter idly spinning a coffee cup by the handle and waiting for his meal. And he was alone.

"This is the first time in a month I've seen you without a woman on your arm," she noted.

"I notice your missing a few members of your entourage too. Pirate sleeping off the drink? Or are the other two—"

"—The other two are probably mired in sapphic liaisons." She waved her hand dismissively and took a seat one stool down.

He brought his cup to his lips and smiled before taking a sip, "Jealous?"

Of two people she didn't hate being happy? Positively. Rumpel was talking about them both being women though.

"Do I smell a whiff of homophobia? I'm surprised. What would your little ultra-liberal girlfriend think?" She glanced at Red, who was hovering at the door to the kitchen waiting for an order. "What would **her** girlfriend think?"

Rumpel followed her gaze and Regina got to enjoy the way his lip twitched as he tried not to snarl.

She leaned in closer—he smelled of aftershave and moldy paper. "And she's not even the only one stepping out on True Love dear. I know all about you and my mother. I hear Belle does too."

He spun around on his seat, "You told her?"

"And come between True Love?" She feigned horror.

"Who?"

"A good, reformed, **honest** man would just ask her themselves."

A hint of that brogue of his brushed his voice, "I'm asking you."

Red chose the moment to return to the counter. She wordlessly set a mug before Regina and filled it with coffee. Too high for Regina to add milk or cream. She smiled frigidly in the ensuing silence before declaring, "You two want to snark take it outside."

That she actually **warned** them surprised Regina and Rumpel both, and they shared that surprise with one another.

Rumpel leaned over the counter. "You telling us what to do dearie?"

"It's not very wise," Regina added.

Red motioned to the diner around them with her chin, "This place was rebuilt by the fairies and it comes with their protection. So as long as you're in here? House rules."

"They weren't the only ones to help," Rumpel reminded her.

"Maybe, but I'm willing to bet taking on a convent of fairy nuns would be a bit much, even for the Dark One."

Rumpel sat up straight, taking in the challenge and calling dark power to him. "I don't like being **challenged**."

"Problem?" Snow White, the former awful little miscreant bandit of the Enchanted Forest, had entered the diner so quietly Regina jumped. She chose to assume her interruption startled Rumpel and Red as well.

The magic around Rumpel quickly dissipated. Mary Margaret's interruption working, and effectively snapping him out of his ire. "I was just leaving," he announced. He glared at Red before pushing his coffee mug towards the edge of the counter with his finger tips and limping out.

"He didn't even wait for his sandwich," Red complained. Granny was standing at the door to the kitchen waving a brown sack at her. "You two don't kill each other either," she told them. She grabbed the sack from Granny and chased Rumpel out.

"What was that about," Snow asked.

"If you needed to know someone would tell you. What are you even doing here? Aren't you supposed to be down on the beach avoiding the school, your family and virtually all other responsibilities?"

Sniping at Snow always did make her feel better. And she smiled not so sweetly for added pleasure.

Snow raised one darkened eyebrow, "Aren't you supposed to be following your son and my daughter around with a hangdog expression?"

Bitch.

Red returned, saw Regina's irritation and Snow's smugness and steered herself back towards the kitchen. "No baiting evil queens on the premises Mary Margaret," she warned as she breezed by.

"Wouldn't dream of it." Snow took a seat beside Regina and reached over the counter to grab a bottled water. "We're just catching up."

"The only thing I hope you catch is chlamydia," Regina sniped. It wasn't her best work, but Snow smirking and not crying while lecturing someone about goodness was unnerving.

"Funny, I've been too busy catching all those **looks** you give my daughter." She unscrewed the lid on her water and took a long sip.

"I don't give your daughter **looks**."

"It's ironic that you murder a man and then become enamored with his granddaughter."

"For a 4th grade elementary school teacher your grasp of the concept of irony is woefully lacking Snow."

"Mary Margaret, please."

"You actually **want** me to call you that?"

"You picked the name out for me Regina, it would be impolite not to show it off." Her tone was so biting. Without a heart Mary Margaret made no pathetic attempt to be polite. The awful creature she truly was was there for everyone to see. Cutting, clever, and as nasty as the cut on Regina's hand.

"Fine, **Mary Margaret**," she savored the name, "you want a better idea of irony? It's me finally getting around to liking you only when you don't have a heart." She tapped her own chest, "Imagine how much time and energy we could have saved if I'd just ripped yours out forty years ago?"

That worked. Mary Margaret blanched and Regina reveled in her victory, sipping her coffee and trying not to squirm with delight on her stool.

And now for the pièce de résistance, "Tell me, does your husband like this new Snow? Or is he finding you a little," she glanced at Snow's water and leached all the heat out of it, "frigid?"

Snow gasped and Regina grinned. Ruby returned to take their orders. Regina ordered cold cuts on rye. Snow declared she wasn't hungry.

####

Emma went more than twenty-four hours without thinking about Regina and the magic kiss that wasn't just regular magic. Arguing with Aurora about surveillance on Whale, getting the nuns to build a magic proof cell for David the gnome, and getting kicked by a sleeping Henry in the bed they shared occupied a lot of that time.

There was also more interviews with innocent nuns and the Mother Superior, the darning of her uniform so she'd look respectable at the clam bake, and a whole hour lecturing her son, Mulan, David, and a sober looking Hook on the reasons why they couldn't use the department's supply of ammunitions for a homemade fireworks show. They'd rigged all ten shotguns to fire at once and were collecting all the rest of the gunpowder into a coffee jar when she found them.

That was for a cannon salute from the Jolly Roger.

"Hook and Henry I can almost expect it from, they're ten year old boys, **you** two are sheriff's deputies."

"A good celebration needs fireworks," Mulan said. Hook nodded.

"I was just here to make sure Henry didn't end up with a hook for a hand too," David claimed. Pathetically.

"I'm **eleven**," Henry insisted.

By the time she'd made them dismantled their death on a stick rig and locked the gunpowder away in the evidence locker the rest of the town had gathered on the beach for the clam bake/giant ass impromptu festival. There was a band and a dance floor made out of old driftwood, christmas lights were strung from posts and tents, and huge bonfires dotted the sand. Most, but not all, of the town was there.

Including her.

They gave her a wide berth and Emma caught more than a few angry glares, but Regina was there, sitting on a log, her legs crossed and her elbows perched on her knee and listening to Henry tell some elaborate story that involved a lot of hand gestures.

She looked different. At ease. She was wearing **jeans**, and a puffy maroon vest over a tailored white oxford to fight the chill off the water. She still had expensive looking dark stoned earrings in her ears, and though her makeup was more casual than usual it was perfect as always.

She was just sort of softer than she pictured Regina in her head. And maternal looking in that Junior League way. She could have been the same cold woman just dressed down. It was the way she was listening to Henry's story that made her truly different. The kid kind of rambled and got a little boring, but Regina was listening with the intensity only a mom could have.

A mom that cared.

It took Emma a full thirty-seconds to realize the funny feeling she got watching Henry and Regina was her own stupid heart jackhammering in her chest.

It was definitely jealousy and definitely not longing and certainly nothing to do with memories of soft lips. She was just jealous of how easily the Evil Queen could shift into the role of soccer mom. Regina made it look effortless, while Emma was stuck in the smoke path from a bonfire, all alone and in a uniform with an awful polyester blend shirt chafing against the inside of her arms.

At least the rest of the party was all pissed that Regina was there and unconcerned with their feelings. Former Evil Queen still trumped every other villain in town. And sheriffs too.

Current, all alone, sheriffs.

Mary Margaret was at one of the larger bonfires with David's arms wrapped awkwardly around her. They were trying to stand close but neither actually wanted it, and when she spied Emma standing around like an idiot she said something to her husband, slipped out of the loop of his arms and trudged over the sand towards her.

Emma looked for a direction to go that would have gotten her away from Mary Margaret, but she was at the outskirts of the party, and her only choices were obviously running or heading towards Mary Margaret or Regina.

So she zipped up the front of her department issued sheriff's jacket and waited.

"You're not going to join the festivities," Mary Margaret asked.

"I'm on duty."

"So are the others. And they're having fun." Mulan was with Hook doing a falconry show for some kids, except they were using Hook's brightly colored parrot instead of a falcon, Aurora was in deep conversation with Belle and Ruby, and David had returned to one of the tables of food to fill his plate up again.

By Emma's count is was his third trip. The only people making more trips were a former walrus, the giant someone had found shrunk down in Cora's handbag, an ex-Lost Boy and Regina.

"How can she put that much food away," she asked.

Mary Margaret followed Emma's line of sight and frowned. Regina had left her perch on the driftwood and was at one of the buffets piling high her plate with lobster, pork, clams and enough corn on the cob to feed half the party. Henry was standing next to her and looking non-plussed by his mother's plate.

"If I put that much food away the buttons on my jeans would take someone's eye out."

Mary Margaret shrugged, "Regina's always eaten like that."

"She uses magic doesn't she?"

"Maybe," she peered at Emma, "why do you care?"

She clasped Mary Margaret's shoulder in a gesture that would have been weird even before they were daughter and mother. "You did an amazing job with this clam bake."

"Emma," she warned, tilting her head disapprovingly. "What's going on with you and Regina?"

"The same thing that's **always** gone on between us. She irritates me. I irritate her. We meet on Sundays to fight over Henry."

"Is she behaving herself with this murder investigation?"

"She hasn't poisoned anyone or turned them into rats."

Mary Margaret crossed her arms and said sagely, "That's her behaving herself," she bit her lip, worrying it briefly before saying, "You know…if she says anything—"

"Like what?"

She sighed, her dark brows furrowing as she tried to say whatever it was in the most tactful way she was capable of, "Regina is…devious."

Emma raised an eyebrow, "I'm aware. She tried to kill me with a turnover."

"I know, but, she has these friends now and she seems…different—but she's done that in the past Emma. She makes you comfortable when really she's plotting your murder. I mean, she spent **years** pretending to be my stepmother."

"But didn't you say you sort of knew back then? That she hated you I mean."

"Only at the very beginning—and the very end. In the middle she acted…happy. Like she wanted to be there."

"Then she tried to have you murdered."

"After having her husband, your grandfather, killed."

"Yeah, but here's the thing, that was before she was a mom. She's too busy worrying about Henry liking her now to be plotting to kill one of us."

Emma didn't think that through before she said it—didn't consider how offensive it **could** be. Between Regina, the book, and Mary Margaret's usual distrust of Regina she'd always kind of assumed that there was no love lost. Mary Margaret and her were only stuck together now because of Henry (and maybe Emma).

But Mary Margaret was stricken by Emma's words, as hurt as she could be with no heart. The absence of it had had her acting like she was on powerful mood-stabilizers. There were rarely any highs or lows—just a frustrating base line lack of emotion.

Being hurt like that…

It was new.

She tried to apologize, but after saying Mary Margaret's name nothing else came out. What the hell was she **supposed** to say?

Mary Margaret attempted to mask the hurt, but she was only halfway successful. Tears made her eyes bright and her nose was red. "No," she tried to smile and it looked maudlin, "I understand. I was never…I was never enough for her. But he is."

She was looking at Henry. He and Regina had returned to their piece of driftwood and were eating and laughing and looking **happy **still.

Emma couldn't think of anything to say to make it better and slipped past Mary Margaret and back towards the bonfire. Away from her son and his other mother, and away from her own mother. She walked quickly—her boots digging into the loose sand, which meant she couldn't be sure if she imagined it, or if, when she turned away, Mary Margaret softly said, "And you are too."

She hoped it was in her head. She'd never been enough before, and she didn't know how to be enough now.

####

Henry was so focused on his own huge second helping of food that he didn't notice Regina's slipping focus. She watched Emma walk away from Snow. Both women seemed upset—with Emma looking more worried and Snow more miserable. They'd been too far away for her to catch what their conversation had been about, but she'd noticed the few glances cast her and Henry's way.

Snow's lost heart—and her family's knowledge of it—were bending them more than Regina would have expected.

Maybe enough to break. She snapped a piece of pork skin in half and popped one half into her mouth. The fat dissolved quickly, leaving something gristly and satisfyingly meaty tasting for her to chew on.

"I think there's hair on my pork skin," Henry complained. He was holding up a shard of it to the distant bonfire light and squinting at its surface.

"Just brush it off."

"Mom," he looked pain.

"What do you want me to do?"

He stared.

"I'm not using magic to Nair your meal. Eat it."

He mumbled something.

"Excuse me?"

Still sullen he shook his head, "Nothing."

Balancing her plate on her thighs Regina pried meat out of a lobster claw. It had been cooked too long and stuck to the insides. "How are you liking the party?"

He shrugged.

"Okay, what about horseback riding yesterday? Did you learn much?"

"David let me sit on the horse for five minutes at the end."

"Just sit?"

"We walked a little. Did you know horses fart?"

"They're a great deal like humans in that respect."

Connections were made in Henry's head and his hairy pork skin was forgotten for a moment. "I hope Leroy's butt doesn't look like that when he farts."

"Don't be disgusting. Eat your dinner."

Chastised Henry returned to his meal…for perhaps half a second. "Last night Grams told me about how you saved her with a horse once. Was that before you tried to kill her?"

It was the tilt of Henry's head, showing he was legitimately curious, that kept Regina from getting upset. There was a note of bitterness too—but when discussing her once hidden past with Henry that would always be there.

Another Henry's anger flashed in her mind. Reminding her, in the end, it wasn't what she'd done in the Enchanted Forest that hurt Henry, but that she'd lied to him about it.

"It was. Before she met your grandmother she was just a naive princess, her horse bolted and I got her away safely."

He accepted her version of events with a nod. "She said you used to have horse jumping competitions at the palace. And that you'd always win."

"It was steeplechasing to be specific. And yes, I was very good so I usually won."

"Emma thinks you cheated."

"Emma **would**. She's about as talented as her mother on a horse."

Henry must have remembered seeing them off from the stables yesterday, because he accidentally smiled. Which made Regina smile. Which made him frown. So she frowned too.

And they went back to eating.

Time, she had to remind herself. Henry needed time. He'd had only a few months to come to terms with everything. Another Henry had had **years**.

"I like this," she said.

Henry was still sour. He yanked a clam from its shell and dipped it into the cup of butter on the log between them.

"Just the two of us," she continued. "I've missed it."

He threw the empty shell out towards the bay and began working another clam from its shell. Emma would have told her to be quiet and give the kid some space.

"I know you're upset with me. About the curse and—"

"Poisoning me?"

She winced and forged ahead—quickly skirting **that** problem, "I miss you Henry. And…" Deep breath. "Not like I would have before the Curse."

His eyes widened in surprise and he quickly tried to put the sour frown of his back in place. But she'd seen the surprise. He didn't know what she'd seen in another world, and he didn't know that his plan, forged just a year ago (for him), had worked. The Curse was broken and if he wanted her, he had a **whole** mother.

"You know I was different before the Curse?"

He didn't say anything but he had to know. Another Henry had told her so.

"And now I'm like them." The people who were laughing and eating. Sinbad was chasing Pongo around a bonfire and Mulan and Aurora were standing close together and trying not to touch even as their fingers twitched. "So now…I really miss you."

Henry had never been very good with emotion. His hugs could crush a person's ribs and he could talk about True Love until he was blue in the face, but when it came to the two of them with no death or outrage in-between he was stiff.

Scared, she realized.

And a child thrust into the emotional minefield of adults. He sat on the log like a lump—confused and quiet and concerned enough to verge on neurotic. She gently took his plate from him and brushed her hand through his hair. It was getting long. Emma would need to take him to get it cut.

"Go enjoy the party Henry. Forget I said anything."

####

Killian found her a little later, full, as sullen as her son had been and far too thoughtful for a town-wide party full of people who hated her.

"This is the single saddest thing I've seen in my life," he declared, "and I've wandered your dreamscape."

"My son still hates me."

"But, he's alive," he said cheerfully.

She tried to glare but Killian had lifted both of his eyebrows in a hopeful expression. So she looked away to hide her own small smile.

"And the boy's also eleven, and just learning his evil mother really cares about him and isn't just having him around town as insurance. Give him time."

"And suddenly you're the expert on child rearing?"

"Just little boys."

They stared at each other.

"That came out wrong didn't it?"

She nodded. "Say that in front of Charming and you'll wind up in jail."

"If he didn't arrest me for making remarks about a threesome with him and his wife he's not going to arrest for that."

The horrific image seared itself into her brain in a vibrant tableau of skin and gasps. She shuddered.

"Now stop sulking and get up and have a dance with me."

"No."

He held his hook out in front of her, "Come on your majesty. It's impolite to reject a man."

"What about a woman? Snap of my fingers and—"

"You'll probably find me more attractive. Just make sure I have big breasts." He wagged his hook again, "Now come on. This whole town keeps staring at us like we're zoo animals. I mean to give them a proper show."

"If its to irritate the town you should have just said so." She grabbed his hook and let him pull her up. The metal was cool against her fingers and the tip of it dug against her bandage.

He dragged her across the beach with his mouth set in a firm line and his eyebrows knitted together in an officious glower. When their feet hit the dance floor he snapped around, put his hand on her waist very formally and raised on eyebrow expectantly.

They danced.

The band was made up of woodsman and hunters. Folksy salt of the earth people armed with fiddles and guitars and tall basses. The music was something very Appalachian, but with a vein of the formalness of the Enchanted Forest.

Good music for a lazy two step—which was one of exactly three dances Regina knew.

She heard them pause briefly before getting back to playing and Killian grinned. "Stunned them into silence."

"I'm the one that cursed them and now I'm dancing at the party celebrating the end of the Curse." They moved gracefully across the dance floor. "It's a little gauche."

"It's completely gauche. Up for a spin."

"Just don't tear my arm off with that thing."

He pulled his arm up for the spin and Regina did most of the work, and around them people stared. They were furious.

It was wonderful.

####

The crowd gathering at the dance floor drew Emma in. She assumed some fairytale Fred Astaire was showing off, but the floor was crowded with couples doing a Texas two step or something.

How the hell did they even know that dance?

How the hell did Regina and **Hook** know that dance? They were one of the couples, moving gracefully across the floor, periodically twirling one another. Regina's face was a mask, but Hook was smugly grinning and sometimes when they'd spin she'd see the ghost of a smile on Regina's face.

Watching it it felt like a stone dropped into her stomach.

A hand brushed Emma's and she startled, looking down in alarm. David had come up besides her and was taking her hand, pulling her onto the dance floor. "Come on," he grunted.

"What? Why the hell—"

They bumped into another couple and both apologized. On the other side of the dance floor Mary Margaret and Henry were watching Regina dance—Mary Margaret's fingers pressed into Henry's shoulder. David spoke softly, "The Evil Queen is dancing at a party celebrating the demise of the her Curse. Someone's going to kill her if we don't ease the tension."

"And we do that with our bad dancing?"

He raised an eyebrow, "There are a lot of things we're bad at Emma, but dancing—" he spun her and pulled her close, sliding his hand into place on her back and gently lifting her other hand to just above shoulder level, "is not one of them."

####

"Who knew Swan could dance?"

Regina did. Another Emma in a skinny black suit had guided her surely across a dance floor. They'd flirted and uttered truths and later that night they'd—she swallowed.

"Stop gaping," she snapped. "It's ruining your timing."

"I'm allowed to be in awe," Killian protested, "that family is the least coordinated group of heroes I've ever seen. Do they just save all the grace for when there's an impromptu dance?"

"And for dodging fireballs."

"Naturally."

Emma and her father weren't doing anything fancy. All they were doing was dancing, and not stepping on each other's toes. It shouldn't have been as impressive as it was, but everyone was watching them, and then trying to watch Regina and Killian. Their heads all flitting from side to side like they were viewing a tennis match. If Regina had cared she would have worried for their necks. All that back and forth couldn't be good for them.

The song the band had been playing was upbeat and quick enough to require swift movements across the floor, but one of the guitars started strumming something slower, and the rest of the instruments followed suit.

The dancers all slowed down. Some drifted off the floor while others chose to sway in place. Killian kept them moving and as they danced she caught sight of Emma. Made eye contact.

It stole her breath away.

####

Regina kept looking. David guided them across the dance floor and they were doing a good job of being casual while still drawing attention from Regina and Hook.

But they'd turn sometimes and she'd spy Regina over David's shoulder.

Eye contact.

And something electric shooting through Emma.

"You okay?"

"I feel stupid."

"You look fanatic," David said with a smile. He spun her and the smile got all goofy like an old dad kind of thing.

Goofy enough that Emma had to smile too.

Then he pulled her back into him, sped the dancing up and wagged his eyebrows.

"Stop," she said with a laugh.

"Just being a dad. That's what we do right? Embarrass our kids in public?"

Emma's smile faltered. "David…"

He pulled her close enough that they were almost cheek to cheek. The perfect way to avoid eye contact.

"This used to be on my bucket list. You know, before." Emma said nothing. "I was dancing with your mother at Cinderella's wedding and I knew I wanted to be there. To dance at my daughter's wedding. And every birthday. I was gonna teach her the stupid dances the farmers used to do in barns. Stuff her mom," she felt his head turn, and if she'd looked she would have seen his one eye on her, "**your** mom, didn't know."

They swayed, barely moving. Other couples flowed around them to the gentle rhythm. Regina's campy "Evil Bitch From Hell" smirk had died down to something gentle as she and Hook spoke softly.

Emma was stuck with David, who was trying not to watch her as they dance. She thought of all the things she could have said to try and make him feel better for sending her away. For losing all that time that had left her bitter and hard. And she thought of the really awful stuff she'd stored up when she was sleeping in her car or in booths at truck stops.

But what came out, instead, was the kind of truth she'd never been in the habit of giving until that curse broke. "This one family I had made me do that racist Indian Princess crap? You know the father daughter stuff?" He nodded, the curse most have stuck that in his head. "They thought it would make me and the dad bond. Only he was always late or wouldn't show up. So I'm with these people long enough that I get to the end school year 'sweetheart banquet.' Its just all these girls in dresses and their dads sober and employed and happy to be there and me in some hand me down jumper waiting on the guy who couldn't be bothered. And it's—"

It was hard. More than twenty years later and she felt a chip of ice in her that was never gonna thaw from that stupid dance.

David squeezed her hand, urging her with that one doleful eye. "It's dumb really." She looked him in the eye and then had to look away or she wouldn't have been able to say it. She shrugged. "I used to imagine a guy who **would** show up. And because I was **six** I'd imagine dancing on his feet like all the other kids with their dads. That always seemed like a really big deal then. Which is dumb. I mean who even—"

David slipped one foot under hers and they wobbled from side to side—nearly falling. They caught ahold of each other. She grabbed his arms and he grabbed her waist.

He was bashful when he spoke. Blushing and knowing how ridiculous he was gonna sound but saying it anyway. "You know I've got pretty big feet Emma."

"I was a kid," she protested.

He slipped his other foot under hers and looped both arms around her waist. With no other place to hold on and not look silly as hell she had to reach up and loop her arms around his neck.

"I know. And I wasn't there. But I'm gonna try now—okay?" He rested his cheek against hers. Guys always had really scratchy stubble, but his was a soft peach fuzz. It didn't feel so bad against her skin.

"David. I'm nearly thirty. I don't need—"

"Can you let me?" They were the same height normally, and standing on his toes didn't change much. So she was looking directly into that one eye and she could see how he had little lines around his eye sockets like someone a lot older and how the sun was creating freckles on his nose. "Even if it's just for this song."

In spite of being sheriff and out in public and on a dance floor shared with a woman who'd used magic kisses to keep her from turning into a tree Emma relaxed in his arms. He smelled like bonfires and the ocean and for just a second, with his arms around her, she felt safe.

Like that little girl waiting on a nonexistent dad at the sweetheart banquet.

####

"Keep staring at her and she's bound to notice."

"Would you shut up."

"I don't know why you don't just tell her."

"Because she has the emotional capacity of a teaspoon and will run away terrified. I have to be patient."

Killian raised an eyebrow.

"I have to **try** at least."

"I'm almost proud of you Regina." He wouldn't be if he knew about the kiss. "Be prouder if you went before the whole town and announced you'd saved them from an apocalyptic future where your mother was queen of Storybrooke and there were statues of you on every corner."

"Trying to rehabilitate my image is a waste of time," she sniffed, "these people like to sit on their high horses and judge those of us who make mistakes."

"And murder hundreds and cast every land into darkness."

"Point is we're on one side of the line of morality and they're on the other guarding it bitterly. They won't let me cross just because I tell a good story."

"Fair enough. And it's a bit more fun over on this side of the line anyway isn't it? We can drink all day, start fights and kill to our hearts content."

Regina frowned, "Killed anyone in particular Killian?"

"Not yet," he nodded to the crowd, "but there's time."

In between the Blue Fairy and a few of her nuns and Belle was Rumpel, standing at the edge of the dance floor, his knuckles white against the handle of his cane and his eyes stony flecks of fool's gold.

"I didn't know he'd come."

"Why'd you think I asked you to dance love?"

She should have known. "Was that what it's about? Reminding him you're here?"

Killian's grin was wicked. "And friendly with his former protege." He spun her around and pulled her back to his front, his arm keeping her in place and his hook digging into her hand. "You won't let me kill him," he whispered into her ear, "so I might as well goad him."

She spun out again and back into a proper stance. But further apart this time, more formal than was appropriate for the slow rhythm of the song. "I have reasons."

"That shouldn't matter. You swore an oath."

She corrected him, "I made a promise."

"Semantics Regina." He slipped into her personal space, leering down at her. He dropped to hand to lift her chin with his hook. Anyone watching would have thought it was seductive. "You may be a mate, but I'll have my revenge."

She knocked the appendage away with her hand, and quickly forced him back into dancing. "Take it from me Killian, revenge isn't worth it." She tried to keep her gaze cool. They didn't need the others around them seeing the growing discord.

"You mean your mother's ire?"

Her head snapped up. Killian nodded. "I know all about his visits to her. And yours." A hint of a frown touched his eyebrows. "Take it from me love, as much as she may love you now she doesn't deserve your love in return. And she certainly doesn't deserve your favors."

"She's not the only reason—"

"She's the only one that matters."

"I'm doing this for **you** Killian. I saw what revenge did in that other world—what **my** revenge ultimately created." A son dying in her arms. "It isn't worth it."

"Really? You've got your son back, and the girl, and your mother." The outer curve of his hook swiped across her bandaged hand, "You even managed to have your health. Where I sit revenge got you everything you dreamed."

"I got **a** girl. She's not her."

His hook dropped to her waist and he pulled her close again. His chapped lips brushed her ear. "Way Mulan tells it she was enough of the girl for you to wake her with a kiss."

She shoved him back so violently he crashed into another couple. The dancers around them all stopped and with a screech of bow across cat gut the band stopped too.

Killian sneered, "Hypocrisy doesn't suit our kind. Leave it to the white hats."

David reached Killian first and grabbed his arm, but Killian shoved him aside with his shoulder and rammed his way through the crowd.

All eyes turned to Regina.

Most of them looked so…happy at the discord. Snow was aghast and the tentative smile that kept creeping onto Henry's face all evening was gone. Even Emma was staring.

Regina felt like she'd fallen into ice water.

Emma started towards her even as Mulan and Aurora went after Killian.

The Blue Fairy was amused, but Grumpy smirked first. Then it turned into a laugh, and others laughed too. A trickle turned into a wave of laughter. And death at Snow White's hand, exile, her heart physically torn from her body by Bluebeard. All were better than Storybrooke looking at her stricken face

and laughing.

####

Shit. The one word turned into a chant in Emma's head as the cold consumed her, starting in the locket and spreading like she was lying in a drift of snow.

Her feet were numb.

A few people snickered and Regina looked like they'd just crucified Henry in front of her and were feasting on his corpse. She was horrified—embarrassed beyond measure.

Emma started to call her name and go to her but Regina turned on her heel and vanished into the night in a puff of smoke. The cold in Emma was enough to make her want to curl up and pray for warmth, but she put one clumsy foot in front of the other and trudged after Regina.

She could **feel** her, which was unnerving enough. The locket seemed to have a direct link to the one Regina wore and she could sort of see the path to her in her head. She reached with her brain because it seemed like the most natural thing in the world to do and the next thing she knew lightening lanced across her vision, the smell of ozone flooded her nose and she was standing on the beach, far from the clam bake and in front of a horrified Regina.

She'd pulled a handkerchief from somewhere to dab at non-existent tears, and she continued to clutch the handkerchief as she gaped wide eyed at Emma.

"Are you okay?"

"Am I—what the hell do you think you're doing," Regina shouted.

Emma **thought** she was going after Regina to see what the hell had happened on the dance floor. She said as much.

"I meant," Regina waved the little white square of cloth at Emma's general person, "**that**." She shoved the hanky in her pocket and came closer. The distant glow of the party caught in her eyes, highlighting their darkness while making them warmer all at once. "You just teleported."

"I didn't mean to. I just…thought?" She shivered. The cold was lingering.

Regina continued to stare in horror.

"What was I supposed to do? The only reason I ever get this cold is because **you're** about to do something evil. So I went after you."

"You thought I was going to hurt someone?"

Emma hugged herself and nodded. Her teeth were chattering. "I just felt the cold Regina. Which," she squeezed tighter, "I still feel by the way."

Regina was surprised. Her bandaged hand, bright white even in the dark, flew to her locket. "Oh. I'm—sorry." She exhaled evenly and the cold flowed out of Emma. "Sometimes I forget about the connection." She wrung her hands together before putting them on Emma's arms and rubbing vigorously. Emma froze—surprised at how easily Regina touched her. "I usually keep a barrier up between us. I must have let it slip." She smiled sheepishly.

"Yeah," Emma said, stunned, "Must have." The layers between them kept any heat from transferring from one woman to the other. There was just the pressure of Regina's hands on Emma's arms. It felt…nice. "Only, that didn't happen when you were dying or fighting Cora or—" She reached up to stop Regina's ministration, her hands on Regina's wrists she pulled them away and put them between them. "When you kissed me."

She really wished she could forget it. Or just let it go.

"I was upset. Killian—"

Emma pressed her fingers into Regina's wrists. "You kissed me Regina. Why?"

The ocean pounding at the distant rocks and the faint strains of music from the party where overshadowed by breathing. Emma's steady breath, and Regina's ragged one.

"You," she swallowed, "you keep asking, but we both know you don't want the answer."

"How do you—"

Regina slipped suddenly into Emma's space, so that the whole length of their body's touched. Regina's nose almost brushed against Emma's. She was looking at Emma's lips and Emma could feel her racing pulse, Regina's wrists still wrapped up in Emma's hands.

"I know," she licked her lips, "because I think right now you're terrified." She was still staring at Emma's mouth, but her eyebrows quirked upwards, "Aren't you?"

Emma was so scared she could barely piece thoughts together. All the insanity of Storybrooke was pounding against the walls she'd propped up in her head. Fairy nuns and distant wars and parents with no hearts. And Regina was the one bit slipping through the cracks. Demanding ingress with those awful knowing looks.

"I just want normal," Emma whispered.

Regina still stared at her mouth, but smiled sadly. "What's between us isn't." Her eyes flashed up to Emma's—sending a streak of heat straight through her. "And it never will be."

But a kiss—something physical—**that** would be familiar. Normal even. If her eyes were closed and the world disappeared behind a haze of something hot in the center of her it wouldn't be so scary. Emma's lips parted.

Could a kiss really bring down the walls? Undo her own sanity?

She crossed the distance.

And a blood curdling scream pierced the growing haze.


	5. Chapter 5

**Author's Note: **Yes some unpopular characters MAY make appearances. You may be annoyed but I'm flipping JAZZED. Also this chapter was going to be enormous, but it really needed to be split for a variety of reasons. So another chapter will be up in the next two days.

**Chapter Five**

One minute Emma was on the beach with Regina about to do something **really** stupid and the next they were appearing in the middle of the clambake in a puff of purple smoke and everyone was staring at them. Then someone else screamed and Regina poofed them again, this time behind one of the tents that backed up to the parking lot.

Regina immediately let go of Emma's hand.

Emma hadn't even realized Regina had grabbed it.

Mother Superior was the one screaming, and a guy in a hoody had stopped about a foot in front of her. His hands were raised above his head and something shiny was clutched in one.

Emma reached for her gun with one hand and stretched her other out before her. "Hey," she called. She crept forward, training her sights on the guy.

The Mother Superior was terrified. She was clutching her rosary and slowly backing away. "He's trying—"

"Drop the knife," Emma shouted.

Regina came up beside her, "It isn't a knife. It's a wand."

A wand—where the hell did the guy get a wand?

"Drop the wand," she amended.

The man looked over his shoulder at them, glassy eyes freezing Emma in place. Haunted eyes. Familiar in a way she couldn't quite peg.

The Mother Superior used his and Emma's distraction as an opportunity. She yanked her own wand out, slashing it violently in his direction.

The ensuring blast of magic put the fairy on her back and sent the man sailing through the air. He crashed onto someone's ancient Volkswagen Rabbit, the hood crumpling and the windshield smashing beneath him. Emma kept her gun trained on him as she backed up to check on the nun.

"You okay?"

She nodded, "Yes, but Crysta… I heard her screaming and came around the corner to check. He hit her with something."

"Something fatal," Regina noted.

The other nun had fallen to the ground, her arms stretched out in front of her as if to block something and her face frozen in a scream. The handle of her wand reflected the light from the parking lot. She hadn't even had a chance to draw it from its holster on her waist.

Emma grimaced, "There's nothing we can do?"

Regina shook her head, "Not for whatever he hit her with."

The Mother Superior looked so angry Emma half expected her to turn into a dragon or something. "This is the second woman under my protection he's murdered." Something intangible and distinctly **magical** swelled around the woman and she pushed Regina and Emma apart to stalk towards the man.

"Woah! Hey. No vigilantism Sister." She jumped in front of the nun to physically block her. "I don't care what he's done."

"You never care what they've done!" It was practically a snarl. Emma stepped back in surprise.

Regina, behind the Mother Superior, raised an eyebrow, crossed her arms, and asked dryly, "Why do I feel this little tantrum is about more than the fairy killer?"

"Sheriff," Mother Superior ignored Regina. "Step aside."

Emma holstered her gun but didn't move. "Not if it means you killing him." She jabbed her finger at Regina, "And **you** don't antagonize her."

Regina rolled her eyes. "I'm not antagonizing, I'm simply—" Suddenly her smirk turned into an expression of horror. She shouted Emma's name, yanked the Mother Superior back and reached over Emma's shoulder with one hand.

Their cheeks brushed.

Which was a stupid thing to notice. Just like it was stupid to notice how nice Regina pressed against her felt or how nice she smelled or how Emma could have sworn she saw a single gray hair at Regina's temple.

Because Regina had shoved the Mother Superior out of the way and reached over Emma to stop a bolt of magic from hitting Emma in the back.

And for just a second Regina was breathing hard and her mouth was about a quarter of an inch from Emma's and it was really, really **nice**.

And then the world ramped back into motion again and Regina was quickly shoving Emma aside and blocking two more bolts with her hand before waving her other hand and sending a car flying into the masked guy's face.

"Jesus!"

Regina smirked. "Not quite."

The man's feet protruded comically out from under the edge of the car.

"The idea was to **not** kill him."

"I saved your life, but please, let's argue over whether that very just murder was just."

"It wasn't!"

"I can't believe I'm saying it," Mother Superior took a deep breath and glanced at Regina with a combination of revulsion and respect, "but I agree with Regina."

Regina snorted.

"He murdered two of the women in my charge."

"You heard the nun. I was justified."

"You're a fairy and you're an evil queen. Pretty sure both your moral compasses are skewed." Regina smirked again and the Mother Superior looked deeply offended. "Besides—"

Metal screeched as the car that had landed on the man turned into a cloud of tiny metal dust motes. The man, his face still hidden by his hood, rose up, waved his own wand menacingly, and then launched the cloud at them.

Moving on instinct Emma grabbed the woman closest to her and shielded her body from the oncoming cloud of what she was pretty sure was death. Regina seemed completely fragile in the moment. Tight and tiny and a little bony in Emma's arms.

The Mother Superior—or Blue—or whatever the hell she was going by, leapt forward and turned the cloud of metal into a flock of birds with a flick of her own wand. When they'd all fluttered away the guy was racing down the street, long legs eating up pavement like he was an Olympic runner.

The fairy nun waved her wand again and a **tree** reached out to grab the man, but he twirled and annihilated it with a swish and flick.

If she could have cursed Emma was pretty sure the nun would have.

Emma, accidentally, gave Regina a quick squeeze before pushing away and chasing after him. She was spryer than most of the people she knew and not even winded as her feet pounded hard against the ungiving pavement. She ducked her head to put on another burst of speed. Another foot and she'd be close enough to tackle the bastard.

Chasing guys down the street? That was natural. That was something Emma had been doing since she was barely out of prison. She didn't even have to think to do it.

She sprang forward shoulder first to knock the guy to his knees.

And then he seemed to

Well, he flickered.

Like a ghost image on an old UHF station. Suddenly he was a hundred feet further ahead and Emma was landing hands first on the pavement. Stray specs of gravel bit into her palms.

She pushed up and looked through her disheveled hair to watch the guy flicker forward again—even further out of reach.

She staggered to her feet and loped from a limp into a jog after him again.

Then a cloud of purple appeared between the two of them and Regina was walking towards the guy, fearless like a freaking terminator. He spun back around to shoot crap out of his wand. Fire. Ice. A flipping snake.

Regina just calmly cast them aside (or sent them into Emma's face in the case of the snake—that had Emma pausing to catch it, throw it into some bushes and squirm—because snake to the face).

The guy flickered forward again, and Regina poofed forward. Soon they were both out of sight and Emma was finally winded.

Headlights behind her drew her attention, and David's truck squealed to a stop beside her. He jerked his head to the bed of his pickup. "Get in."

She barely had her ass over the lip of the truck before he was gunning it.

She managed to wrench open the sliding window between the cab and the bed of the truck despite David taking turns like they were in the Indy 500. His jaw was set firmly and his one eye narrowed with unerring focus.

"How'd you know where we were?"

"Blue pointed this way. Are you okay?"

"Not dead. Don't know if I can say the same for the guy we're chasing. If Regina gets to him first—"

The whole truck swung wide to avoid a six foot long slug flopping in the middle of the road.

"I'm more worried more about their collateral damage," David grunted.

Emma had to agree.

And hope the slug wasn't someone she knew.

Or the flock of seagulls.

Or the tiny monkey angrily banging two cymbals together.

"What the hell kind of sorcerer is this guy," she shouted.

"How should I know?"

He swerved around a pit of boiling tar that used to be the intersection between Main and Harvard.

Far, far ahead Emma could see the puff of smoke from Regina's teleportation and she could feel the tug on her necklace with each leap—like it was begging her to just tear through time and space to provide Regina some back up.

She leaned back into the cab, "If you can get a little closer I think I can teleport up there ahead and give Regina some help."

"How?"

He swerved to avoid a ferociously barking fur covered car.

"I'll figure that out. Just see what you can do."

"There's not much further to go. We're nearly to the town line. He goes through and he's cursed again."

Which would solve one problem. But create another. Stopping a killer was important, but with the fairies being weird and all the bad guys talking about oncoming war Emma kind of wanted to know **why** the guy was offing people.

"Then maybe—" he swerved around living trees that reached out for the car with gnarled branches— "step up on it David!"

####

Regina wasn't winded, but she was monumentally irritated and her magic reserves were depleted. The only thing keeping her from full on wrath was the bright orange line on the ground indicating the edge of the curse. The hooded man was standing before it, his shoulders rising and falling.

The chase was done.

"End of the road," she didn't quite crow. "We both know that all you can do with that wand are little distractions. So drop it and surrender and I'll only turn you into a…cat or something. You can hunt mice at the sheriff's station."

His back still to her he held his wand out at his side. His wrist was loose—as though he were about to drop it.

"There's a war coming," he said in a voice so deep it had to be fake.

Regina rolled her eyes, "Of course there is. If you all wanted it to be a secret you should really stop talking about it."

His head turned, as if he was looking over his shoulder. "What side will you choose Queen?"

"The side that keeps the people I love alive."

A car was coming. Headlights illuminated the man.

No.

**Cars**. One coming from the town and one coming from beyond it. To Storybrooke.

Regina couldn't see the man's mouth but she could hear the pleasure in his voice. "Good."

"What is that supposed to—"

He suddenly flung the wand at her. It sliced through the air like a dart. Out of reflex she caught it. Her own magic, dark and oily and too hot and cold met with the potent fairy magic that charged the wand. The build up lasted just a split second. Long enough to watch the man spin on his heel, bow deeply, and step backwards over the line as the car coming up behind him swerved to avoid him.

He disappeared into the darkness and the car smashed into a tree and the wand exploded in Regina's hand, launching her ten feet into the air.

She heard someone call her name. Or she thought she did. The world was just **energy** in the moment. Energy and chaos and a weightless feeling in the pit of her stomach.

Her head smacked into the pavement and lights flashed in her eyes and her teeth clashed painfully together.

Bells rung in her ears.

Time stopped. Or maybe it ran too quickly.

"Regina?"

She heard her name and tried to open her eyes, but it just made her head hurt more.

"Regina!"

She felt knees pressed against her side and chilly, pleasant hands touch her. A palm against the flat of her chest. One on her cheek. Then she was being pulled up against a body that smelled like leather and bonfire smoke and fingers were prodding the back of her head which she knew existed but which, for the moment, just felt sort of white.

Her brain wasn't working right.

"She's bleeding—David call an ambulance!"

"This guy over here needs one too. Hit his head pretty bad when he wrecked his car."

Emma. That's who was holding her.

"Emma?"

The hand in her hair stilled then tilted her head up so that when she cracked open her eyes she could see Emma Swan haloed by moonlight. And she looked terrified.

"He went over the line. You need to go after him."

Two whole sentences earned her one of Emma's very rare and never directed at her looks of relief. It was followed by an even more unheard of **hug** as Emma pressed Regina's head into her chest and sighed. Her cool hand was gently cupping the back of Regina's head, but was mindful of whatever giant lump was forming there.

"I thought I was gonna have to tell Henry—"

"Not today," she said—her voice muffled by Emma's chest.

It must have felt weird having someone speaking into her chest because Emma froze again and then gently laid Regina back down and ignored commenting on what had been, unequivocally an **embrace.**

She was so pleasantly surprised by the moment that she didn't realize she was passing out until perhaps a second before darkness claimed her.

####

Emma didn't have time to think about the very real concern she'd felt for Regina when she'd seen her struck. She didn't have the luxury of time. Not with Regina passed out again and the murderer on the other side of the barrier and the town's first official visitor half buried under the welcome sign.

God. She wouldn't ever have time. Every day seemed to be a new gigantic blow to her brain and she was pretty sure one of these days they were gonna knock her on her ass permanently.

That'd be it. The end of Emma Swan. Killed by information overload.

She stripped off her jacket and used it as a pillow for Regina's head. Her breathing seemed steady enough. She seemed **alive** enough. Just unconscious.

The guy in the car was a different story. David was kneeling next to the open car door and looking as grim as he always did with that damn eye patch. "Out cold, and—" He peeled back the guy's lip. His teeth were stained red.

"Maybe he bit his tongue," Emma said hopefully.

"Not with our luck." He wagged the phone he was holding in his other hand. "Called the hospital. EMTs should be here any—" The distant wail of sirens rang through the night— "second. Mulan and Aurora are on their way too."

"Good. We'll go after the guy. He's on foot and probably in the woods with no magic. So he shouldn't be hard to find. Can you handle things here?"

He was offended. "Sure," and grouchy looking, "I'll try to keep this guy's arrival low key. Hopefully most people will still be at the clam bake and we can get this guy in and out of town in a couple of hours."

And if that didn't work there was a six foot slug and a furry car and a whole host of other junk flying around town after the murderer's escape. Between all of that and Regina's major embarrassment on the dance floor the town gossip was gonna be overpacked.

Well…at least she hoped it'd be.

####

It wasn't. After four hours wandering the woods outside of town and coming up with no murderer and then chasing a giant slug down Main with a bag of salt Emma made her way to the hospital and found Mary Margaret, the Mother Superior, every frickin' dwarf in town, David, Ruby, and, inexplicably, Dr. Hopper waiting for her.

They turned as one and when she walked through the sliding doors, and it was only with immense effort on her part that she didn't walk right back out into the night.

"Who's watching Henry?"

"Granny," Ruby supplied.

"And the rest of you are skipping the clam bake because…?"

"It's after midnight and we got a stranger in town," Leroy said.

Emma shot David a dirty look and he waved helplessly at his wife. "They needed to know," Mary Margaret somehow said both urgently and lamely. Woman couldn't keep a secret if her life depended on it.

"There's a time and a place," Emma snapped.

Mary Margaret wilted and her husband tried to put his arm on her shoulders. She shrugged it off and backed away from the group hugging herself.

None of the rest noticed. They all stepped forward as one, firing off questions like they were entitled and it wasn't the end of a really, really, **really** long day.

Lots of questions. Half of which she had no answers for.

"Enough," she shouted. "I know you are all…concerned, and curious, but it's police business not," she waved at them, "town busy body business."

"Did you miss the part where he's a **stranger**," one of the dwarves (Happy?) asked.

"And the part where this is a town of **magic**," Leroy followed up. "Did you not see Splash?"

"Of course I saw—you guys aren't mermaids and no one is kidnapping you for experiments."

"Yet," Ruby said, "but this guy sees me trotting around on a full moon and we've got problems."

"So don't go for a walk on a full moon?"

Ruby glared.

"Here's the thing, no one is getting kidnapped. Okay? I mean as far as this guy knows we're just a tiny town with a lot of very concerned citizens." She made a point of making eye contact with each of them, "Right?"

"That's what you **think** he knows," Leroy countered. "But he could be a spy or another murderer or the Evil Queen's minion for all **we** know."

Shitty minion of the last one was the case.

"I don't—I looked in his car okay? Gas receipts for up and down the coast of Maine and a half eaten lobster roll. Not the stuff you'd find in a spy's car."

"That's what he **wants** you to think," another dwarf said.

She sighed, "Fine. David you got his phone?"

"Sure," He'd stuck it in an evidence bag and had it in his back pocket. He produced it quickly. "It's password protected though. We couldn't get through."

"He tried to get me to hack it," Leroy grumbled.

She shot David an incredulous look. "With what? A pickaxe?"

"That's what **I** said."

"Luckily for you I'm a really good bail bonds woman and not a tiny miner." She pulled out the usb fob she kept on her keyring. It was illegal pretty much everywhere and definitely, positively, not appropriate for an upstanding sheriff to have, but for a bail bonds person who lived bounty to bounty it had saved her bacon more that once.

"What's that," Mary Margaret asked.

"Me being awesome," she said casually. She plugged it into his phone where it quickly made short work of the four digit passcode he'd used. "We might have been in trouble if he'd added another digit or two to this code, but fortunately for us—" his home screen popped up and she flipped through dialed calls and his photos, "he's an ordinary joe. Not a spy, a minion, a murderer or even," a grainy photo of some dry looking steak scrolled by, "a particularly good photographer. I think we're in the clear."

Blue jutted out her chin, "Perhaps where it concerns our visitor. But what about the other one. Where's the man who is murdering my sisters?"

Almost a dozen eyes swiveled back to zero in on Emma. "We haven't found him, but I've got Aurora and Mulan still looking—" Leroy rolled his eyes— "for him."

"Great," Leroy mumbled, "how are the pillow princess and her cross dressing girlfriend gonna find him?"

"With their eyeballs Leroy, just like anyone else would. Only, you know, Mulan is a famous warrior tracker so she's probably better than a grumpy janitor."

Dopey (she thought—she had no idea for sure though) laughed. "She's got you there buddy." A few of the other dwarves snickered and the high energy of the group dwindled.

With the mob settled Emma bought a stale coffee from the vending machine and went on a hunt for Dr. Whale. David and Mary Margaret trailed after her and Mary Margaret kept opening her mouth to apologize and then not saying anything.

They eventually found the doctor slipping out of a room and looking way too furtive for Emma's comfort.

"Everything all right," Mary Margaret asked him.

He jumped in surprise and straightened his tie and smoothed his hair. "Oh yes. Fine."

"How's the patient?"

"She's well enough. She has a lot of bruises but no concussion. With her magic she'll heal just fine at home—"

"We meant the car crash guy," David said, looping his thumbs into his belt loops and posturing. He must have been tired because he usually didn't get so macho with Whale.

Or maybe it was because his wife slept with the guy and was standing right next to him.

"Asleep, for now. We repaired the internal bleeding la—" Emma's eyes glazed over as he talked about medical stuff none of them understood. The gist, as well as she could gather, was that the guy was asleep and would be stuck in a hospital bed for the next week.

"Is he conscious," she asked.

He looked exasperated. Like he'd already explained, "No," he said slowly. "But he should be awake within the hour. **One** of you can speak with him then."

They agreed to meet outside the guy's door by two o'clock. David and Mary Margaret went home for real coffee and to check on Henry. Knowing she couldn't go home because she'd pass out as soon as she crossed the threshold Emma opted to stay at the hospital.

Making sure Regina was okay had **nothing** to do with it.

That's just where her aching feet took her. To the room she'd seen Whale step out of.

She'd assumed Regina would be sleeping with the head bump and the late hour so she didn't bother peeking in first.

She got an eyeful of half-naked Regina for her trouble. Regina was wincing and pulling back on her shirt giving Emma a brief glimpse of stomach and expensive bra in the process. It was black, and navy blue, and lacy.

"Can I help you," a testy Regina asked. She glared at Emma with one raised eyebrow.

"I…" Emma tried to force **anything** out of her mouth. Nothing came.

Regina put her hands on her hips, and with the unbuttoned shirt and all that skin it was doing things to Emma's addled brain.

The kind of things that had her pretty sure she was the one with the bump on her head.

"This is where you turn around to be polite Emma. **Not** where you continue to gape at me."

"Right, sorry." She turned around. "I'm just trying to figure out how that bra isn't showing through your shirt. "

"Thick fabric—shouldn't you be at home by now?"

"Waiting on the car crash victim to wake up."

"Whale said he's from beyond the town."

"That's what his license and registration say too. I want to just make sure he keeps thinking he crashed in Podunk, Maine instead of super magical Storybrooke, Maine. Thought I'd check up on you while I wait."

Regina gave her her "I'm fine but really I'm not fine" smile. "No concussion. But half my body and the back of my skull apparently match my bra."

"Fashionable."

Emma's palms felt a little sweaty and she stuck them both in her back pockets. "You uh…need a ride home? I got time."

Regina carefully buttoned up her shirt. The bandage that had become a permanent fixture on one hand was smudged with road sludge and looked like it needed to be changed. "I don't think that's best, do you?"

Emma looked back up at her face in surprise. "What? Why?"

She was very plaintive looking—as though a stare could communicate whatever was going on in her head.

"Because of the beach," Emma ventured.

Regina tilted her head. "You seemed…confused. Somehow I don't think helping me to bed and playing nursemaid will help."

"Who said anything about a bed?"

"Well with my back I don't think doing those kind of activities on the stairs would be advisable."

Emma rolled her eyes, "Jesus. This?" She waved between them, "Was not me hitting on you. It's me being polite. What happened on the beach was me being **too** polite so you stop molesting me with your eyes every time we're in the same room and I'll stop being confused." She did air quotes around the last word. "Deal?"

Regina leaned down to tug on her boots. The position just happened to present a view of her ass that, until recently, Emma would not have considered glorious. "And curious," Regina reminded her, "don't forget curious."

She popped back up and Emma's eyes were drawn to the locket on Regina's chest. Regina tapped it. "You wanted to know about this. Remember?"

"Fine. You don't molest me with your eyes. I don't do whatever it is that seems to be leading you on."

Regina then dragged her eyes up and down Emma's body before smiling. "Fine."

"Fine?"

She shrugged, "Fine."

"You're not…hurt?"

She cocked her head, "Should I be?"

"Well, I mean," Emma rubbed her nose and looked down, "Because of what happened in the forest the other day."

"Ah. That."

"Yeah. That." Archenemy mother of your child kisses weren't supposed to be that pleasant.

Or magical.

"The truth is I didn't think what I did would work because **you**, the one standing here sneaking looks at my ass, are not the person that I might, conceivably, be hurt by. So **you** putting an end to things really has no bearings on **my** feelings in the long run."

"Because I'm not h—"

Regina shook her head, "No questions remember." She waved her hand up and down between them like there was an invisible wall, "Cessation of…things."

"Right."

"That means you stop staring Emma." She twirled her finger, "You turn around and walk out."

"Okay."

"And whatever you do? Don't look back."

Emma did walk out. But she looked back too. So she saw Regina's shoulders sag and she saw her twist one hand in the other. And she saw the look on her face.

Emma had a gift for seeing lies. And Regina had just told a whopper.

####

The car crash victim was named Greg Mendell. Mulan helpfully told Regina all about it over slices of apple pie and steaming mugs of fresh brewed coffee. She'd stopped by Sunday morning to check on Regina and had stayed until nearly noon, chatting and helping with the cider brewing downstairs.

Though chatting wasn't the best term to use. Mulan, while far from the stoic warrior stereotype people constantly painted her as, still possessed a particular efficiency of conversation. When alone with her Regina often found herself slipping into a similar habit. So after the coffee and pie and updates on the night's events (no sign of the murderer and no threat from Mendell) they worked in pleasant silence.

The work itself kept Regina's mind off her headache.

And Emma Swan.

It was as though she'd been cursed to think of her constantly. Sifting through every conversation with every version of her. Remembering little details like how her lower lip jutted out when she was flabbergasted by the town and how she stuck her hands in her back pockets when she was trying not to be flirtatious.

Thinking about her wasn't healthy. Mulan, Aurora and even Killian would have happily told Regina as much.

But it didn't stop her mind from drifting. Didn't stop the ache when the impossibility of her struck Regina. And it didn't stop the little smile when she thought of those moments. The **good** ones. When they'd kissed. When they'd shared. When she'd not just seen but **felt** Emma's concern.

Mulan was crushing apples in the press and spinning the handle with gusto and Regina knelt next to a keg to pour a sample from a recently (and hopefully well aged) batch. The boozy fumes helped her headache, and the crisp scent of apples soothed her.

Her locket blazed briefly. Which meant somewhere in town someone had said something that had pissed Emma off. It happened often enough that Regina usually just funneled the swell of Emma's magic into herself. A kind of unconscious habit she'd been forced to develop with the other Emma.

But her head was throbbing from the day before and funneling the magic only made it worse. She winced.

Mulan looked up sharply. Never missing a thing. "You okay?"

"Of course."

"Either the cider is bad or you're hurt."

"I'm was punted across the highway last night by a stolen fairy wand," she grumbled, "okay is relative at the moment."

"You should take it easy."

"Thank you **mother**." Knowing Regina's mother Mulan was offended. "A figure of speech," she quickly said.

"Thank you **Hitler**," Mulan deadpanned. Nice to know she was brushing up on the new world's history.

"That doesn't even make sense."

"Fine. Stalin?"

"You're just spouting off the names of well known genocidal despots."

"If the shoe fits."

It did. Technically.

Once.

Sort of.

Was it genocide if they were wood sprites?

Regina went back to sampling cider and Mulan went back to preparing the next batch. At noon the door to the outside was flung open and sunlight poured in. They shaded and their eyes and blinked up at the incursion.

Aurora poked her head in, "Why are you two down here all alone?"

"I'm giving your girlfriend tips."

"Please don't. I'd rather not think of you in bed."

"**Cider** tips dear. Get your head out of the gutter."

Two and a half years on a boat with Killian had sapped Aurora of all her potential to feel shame. She hadn't even blushed at Regina's failed double entendre. "Mind if I borrow Mulan? I have an idea for finding our missing murderer."

"I though you lost the trail when he rounded back to the road last night?"

"I did?"

They both looked at Aurora curiously.

"I'm not telling you my idea because you'll tell me I'm stupid and I already got enough eye rolling from Emma this morning rounding up that furry dog car."

"Fine. You two have fun wandering the forest again then."

Aurora nodded like Regina had given her an order. "We will. Also Henry's upstairs and there aren't any Charmings around. I'm pretty sure he ran away again."

####

Henry had not run away.

He did, however, walk across town just to check on his mother.

And get some comic books.

And his winter coat.

And spend the night.

A call to Emma confirmed his plans.

Though Emma also sounded like she didn't actually know about the plan until Regina and Henry called and she just wanted Regina to think she was a good mom.

That would teach her to think parenting Henry would be easy. Regina was a fantastic mother and Henry had once given her the slip and fled to **Boston**. Mom for six weeks Emma didn't stand chance.

To celebrate her son pulling one over on Emma Regina offered to make an elaborate lunch, but she got dizzy boiling water for the rice so they settled on sandwiches and ate on stools in the kitchen.

Henry dangled his feet and happily munched on his ham on sourdough. She'd need to get more bread soon.

"Emma told me what happened," he said. He was trying to sound much older than he was, but he had both elbows on the counter top and was holding his sandwich in both hands. A glop of mayo slid out the bottom and onto his plate and there was a small smear of it on the corner of his mouth.

"I'm sure she put her spin on it," Regina groused.

"She said you were chasing the guy who's killing the nuns and he tried to blow you up."

"That's…" Actually very accurate.

He grinned—looking younger than he was, "I'm glad."

That she'd nearly been blown up?

"That you were helping," he quickly amended when he realized what it sounded like he'd said.

She could see how he wanted to say more. Maybe tell her how proud he was of her for changing. He didn't. More than two months living with one Charming or another but he still understood his mother's pride and how not to wound it with earnest platitudes.

Once upon a time he would have happily said it just to see the hurt on her face. Back then it seemed like he thought hurting her was the only way he could prove to himself she cared.

She reached for the pitcher of orange juice and poured Henry another glass. "How are you finding living with Emma?"

"It's nice," he said reflexively. "And weird," he added. "There's four of us and just one bathroom and Grams takes **forever **when we're getting ready for school and Gramps doesn't put the seat down."

She tried not to snort.

"Also Emma keeps taking me to Granny's so Gram and Gramps can nap—which is stupid. I can **be** quiet."

"I know you can." Snow and David's "napping" sessions must have been horrifically awkward with her heart, and thus most of her ability to love, gone.

"Emma and I share a bed, so some nights its like a sleepover. But she fidgets all night and makes the bed hot and she says I kick."

"You've been that way since you were a baby. Graham used to compare you to a mule as a toddler."

He frowned at the mention of the former sheriff and Regina felt something approaching regret. The other Henry had forgiven her for doing what she felt had been necessary. For ending a life that threatened to undo her own. She doubted a younger and more idealistic son would do the same. This Henry still used his own ethics like a sword and shield.

"They have that furry car corralled at the school bus depot, would you like to go see it," she asked, changing the subject.

"What about your head?"

"I can't boil water, but I think I can manage a peaceful walk with my son."

They quickly finished their lunches and pulled on their coats. The walk to the depot would have been too long for Henry a few years ago, but now he kept jogging ahead, full of energy.

Every once in a while he'd pause and look back at her. Sometimes she thought it was with pride for the woman that saved Storybrooke and was handpicked to find a murderer. And sometimes, she was positive it was with disgust for the woman he knew killed someone **he'd** loved.

They never said Graham's name after he died. And two and a half years and another Henry later she remembered why.

Regret was a sickly feeling inside of her and she didn't like it one bit.


	6. Chapter 6

Furry car. Housed at bus depot. Actually dog. Keeps licking people who get close. Disaster averted.

Tiny monkey with cymbals. Actually Little Boy Blue. Turned back to human with rising sun. Returned to parents. Disaster averted.

Six foot long slug. Salted when it destroyed three vegetable gardens and slimed Chip Potts while he was chasing it with a stick. Determined to likely be a feral cat. Did not have boots. Disaster averted (we think).

Tar pit. Filled with rocks. Former ogre upset because he was planning to bathe in it. Neighbors glad because they did not want to see a naked ogre bathing in a tar pit in the center of Main Street. Disaster averted.

Living trees trying to grab people. Pruned. Disaster averted.

Flock of seagulls. Decent music.

"I don't think this is how a police report goes."

Emma leaned back in her chair, "**We're** the police. It can go how we want." It was Monday morning and after a full weekend of work Emma was finally starting to feel like things were under control.

"And Flock of Seagulls isn't decent. They're **great**," David continued. Surprised, Emma looked up. "They just have bad hair," he added bashfully.

"Monumentally bad hair. Mary Margaret on a humid day bad."

He winced. Mary Margaret wore hats on humid days and if a person valued their lives they didn't mention it.

"Now back to the report: Flock of seagulls. Decent band. Terrible birds. Flew away. Hopefully not a loved one. Disaster averted."

"Murderer of two fairies. Ran away. Disaster imminent," Aurora drawled. She strode into the room in an outfit out of an L.L. Bean catalog, complete with leather and rubber boots, a farm jacket a size too big and a flannel shirt. "But Deputy Basile has a lead. Disaster," she paused to appreciate her own self, "potentially averted."

"I **really** don't think this is how police reports go," David whined.

"Just wait until she gets to the part on how she got the lead," Mulan said. She'd come in behind her girlfriend, and was wearing her usual deputy uniform, only with the legs tucked into a pair of boots that matched Aurora's. She bent down to unlace them.

Aurora moved into the center of the room, shrugging off her coat. The deputy badge she wore around her neck flashed as it caught sunlight streaming in through the window. "It was genius."

"I doubt Emma will agree."

That just made Emma nervous. She looked warily at Aurora, "What did you do?"

"I talked to witnesses."

"David and I did that last night. Blue was the only witness."

"Of the murder. **I** talked to those who witnessed his escape. A car picked him up and drove away," she pulled out her cellphone, "I got the license plate number and everything."

"How?"

"She talked to birds."

She talked to— "Huh?"

Aurora preened, "I'll admit it's been years since I tried, but as you know all princesses can talk to birds."

Not all princesses. Regina talking to them just sent them plummeting to their deaths.

"Right. Regina taught me that in the Enchanted Forest. Which is full of magic. Maine isn't magical."

"But the town is. I found a very lovely owl out near the barrier and he spoke with a whole flock of different kind of birds and they went out, asked questions, and came back."

She was so proud of herself Emma didn't even ask if she was serious.

"Isn't it wonderful," Aurora asked brightly.

Emma's brain was definitely leaking out through her ears. It had to be. Not just from the news that the murderer was immune to the curse, but by how Aurora had come by the information. She had—she'd just— "How the hell are you supposed to put that in a police report!"

"I don't know, **you're** the sheriff. Also, we need bird seed."

"A lot of bird seed," Mulan said.

"Why do we need—"

Regina, and her perfect timing, chose that moment to click clack in in high heels and a dressy gray ensemble, "Emma why does the outside of the police station look like a Hitchcock film?"

####

Regina was not allowed to help with the bird problem.

Something about having to clean up all the corpses if she opened her mouth in front of them.

David and Mulan went to the feed store for the seed to satisfy the legion and Emma and Aurora stood outside shouting platitudes to sooth them.

It left the station completely empty, and if Regina had had it in her head to do something awful she could have.

But she was a good and relatively honest woman now. Loosening all the screws on the chairs would be rude. As would switching the labels for the salt and the sugar in the kitchenette. Leaving keys to all the locks hidden under the pillows in the cells was just illegal.

Well, switching the labels on the sugar and salt wouldn't be **that** rude, and if given time she could come up for reasons why the sheriff and her deputies all deserved it. It was accomplished with a simple swish of her hand.

It was not why she'd come to the station though. She'd come to examine the wand the murderer used. Emma was still insistent on Regina being the de facto magic consultant—much to the Blue Fairy's frustration—and after a day of rest she was ready to get back to investigating.

The man had now killed someone important to Aurora, a former fairy who used to do nothing but sing in the forest and frolic with woodsmen, and he'd attacked Regina.

**Smiled** at her.

She wanted her hand in his chest, squeezing all his secrets out of him.

She drew a pair of rubber gloves from the box at the door to the evidence room. Their smell was nauseating and the one bulged over the bandage on her hand. Her hand itself ached the closer she got to the wand. Throbbed really. She pulled it into a fist clumsily and released again, hoping the movement would return some of the sensation leaching from it.

It didn't.

Shoving it into the pocket of her coat she had to rely on her other hand to empty the evidence bag onto the table.

The wand had shattered into three pieces when she'd grabbed it and the faint outline of her hand could be seen on the largest, middle, piece. The tip of the wand was black as though scorched and the handle was a milky gray.

As a fairy's wand it would have originally been iridescent and garish. Blue or green or whatever color the fairy holding it had been born to be. She could see faint traces of pink peeking through the gray. Just tiny veins of color. The handle was adorned with glass vines and berries that suggested the owner had been fond of vineyards.

Maybe the fairy had a problem with drink.

Like more than one of the fairy monks.

Been murdered while passed out.

Angry, violent magic came off the shards in waves. Somehow Regina's own magic had burned itself into the wand, consuming what bits of the fairy magic were still in it. It had all been too much for the pieces and they pulsated angrily because of it.

She apologized aloud, and was glad everyone else was gone.

Wands weren't sentient, but years of having a fairy's magic funneled through them imbued them was a kind of consciousness.

"I need to know who used you last," she whispered, "my magic may have broken you, but it was their hand that threw you. So any help you could give would be appreciated."

It continued to give off a raw anger that would have driven most to their knees. Regina was familiar with the emotion. After all it was what fueled her own magic.

Her other hand twitched suddenly in her pocket and she yanked it free and watched as her fingers all tightened and curled like a talon.

The wound on her hand, only half healed and maybe never mended whole, spasmed with intense pain. She gritted her teeth and did what the wand couldn't quite ask. She yanked the glove bandages off and watched as magic in the wand arced up toward the cut. A spark struck the flesh. She didn't see it. Seeing it required looking at her hand. She could only feel it.

More and more magic from the wand shot upwards, pelting her hand like pinpricks of fire. The wound flared with heat so intense she thought her whole hand might burst into flames. Magic coursed in through the wound and filled her with gray, errant thoughts she couldn't quite grab hold of.

Then, because one explosion in a day and a half wasn't enough.

The wand exploded again.

####

Emma was waltzing back into the station to make sure Regina wasn't switching the sugar and the salt or something equally juvenile when something loud sort of "whoomphed" in the evidence room. Black soot shot out from around the door, caking the surrounding wall and floor.

She rushed toward the door knowing that could never be a good side when it swung wide open and Regina stepped out, covered in even more soot.

Emma stopped short. "Do I want to know?"

"I was examining the wand the murderer used," she said primly. Which was a feat, what with her being a completely matte black except for the now startling whites of her eyes. "It exploded."

"That seems to be happening a lot around you."

Regina slapped the sleeves of her jacket and clouds of soot plumed out. Emma stepped back a step to avoid getting covered.

"Are you…okay at least?"

Regina looked down at her hand—the one that had had a bandage on it since her return. She flexed it. "I appear to be." She ran the thumb of her other hand down her palm. Soot was smeared away to reveal an angry red wound that ran the width of her palm. Dark veins of black spread out from it.

"That's—"

Regina shoved her hand into her pocket. "A reminder not to step between people and cursed knives."

"I didn't—"

"Know? Why should you?"

"I don't—is it healing at least?"

"Slowly." She raised her shoulders and shook herself. It would have been a small movement, but clouds of soot fell off of her. "But that's not what we should be discussing," she said. Purple smoke ran over her and the soot disappeared. She pulled her hand out of her pocket and wrapped it in a new bandage with practiced efficiency.

"You want to talk about the wand."

"The previous user was…not kind."

"Kind of gathered from the murders."

"The wand showed me its past. He killed the fairy he took it from. Stabbed him with the wand."

"Him? There are guy fairies?"

"Of course. They make wine in their monastery out in the woods."

"Seriously?"

Regina raised an eyebrow.

"There's a whole other group of fairies out there and no one thought to mention it?"

"I presumed you knew. You **do** have a map of the entire town. What did you think the giant gray "monastery" part was?"

She though it was a park or something. "Why do I never see them walking around then?"

Regina pursed her lips in satisfaction, "I made sure they were all very private, and that they took vows of silence." It blossomed into a full blown grin, "Male fairies are normally much more gregarious than their female counterparts."

God, she was an asshole. "You're such an asshole."

Regina wouldn't deny it. She continued smiling smugly and shrugged instead.

"And why do I get the feeling you aren't the only one being an asshole about this. The Mother Superior said all her nuns were at Granny's when Merryweather was murdered, and we **know** they were all at the clambake the other night. That leaves the monks she failed to mention."

"Who never leave their monastery—even to murder nuns," Regina reminded her.

"Right, but if the guy is murdering nuns its not like he takes his vows too seriously."

"You really think the Blue Fairy, purported purveyor of all things good, knew about the murders?"

"If Gold can fall in love with a woman than a fairy can murder people and another one can screw with my investigation."

"Don't let others hear you say that Emma. Fairies are…respected where we come from, and for good reason. They're **incapable** of killing."

"Right. Mother Superior told me it shows up on them if they do kill. Like a mark or something."

"Exactly. The monks would notice if one of their number were killing, and they'd report it. That's in their nature too."

"Maybe." She sighed. "Fairy conspiracy because of this "war" or whatever does sound kind of crazy." Regina said nothing. "And I guess Aurora did say the killer had someone pick him up. That kind of means the threat's from outside the town."

"Which may be worse."

"I don't know. Outside the town means Leroy's Splash theory could be right. Inside the town means someone knows how to get out without losing their memories and are hiding it to help with some huge war we know nothing about."

"They sound equally awful."

"Yeah. You get vivisected or you get to be in whatever the hell this war is supposed to be."

Regina mulled it over, "If I had to choose, I think I'd prefer war that spans lands. I get to kill more people that way."

Such. **Such** an asshole.

"So lets hope the monks are up to no good then." Emma jerked her head in the direction of the parking lot, "Want to take a ride and find out?"

"Do I get to kill them if they are?"

"No. But I might let you inflate them. We can tie them to the back of the cruiser and float 'em to jail."

"Not your mother's justice," she sniffed.

"The day I try to do justice like my mother just shoot me in the face."

She didn't know why she said that. She didn't actually know anything about Mary Margaret and the other land and her brand of justice. But Regina beamed, and that seemed like a good enough reason in the moment.

####

"How, uh, was Henry yesterday?"

Emma insisted on driving, despite having only a vague idea of where she was going, and she drove slower than Aurora she sat in the driver's seat.

Well, not actually. Aurora tended to rabbit on the break. Emma cruised, letting the car speedometer smoothly slide from too fast to too slow and back again.

"He was good. It felt a little like old times."

Emma nodded. "Good. Maybe we could…do it again sometime."

"Share custody? Done playing parent so soon?"

She twisted her hands on the steering wheel.

Regina flexed her bad hand. "Sorry."

"I get it, you know, your frustration?"

"Do you?"

She nodded again, "Sure. You adopt a kid and care for him and love him as much as you can and then get a broken curse and me for your trouble. You had him to yourself and now you've gotta share."

"You make Henry sounds like a cookie."

"I'm just saying I understand why you're mad about the living situation. So I want to help."

"Help would be having him home."

"Even if he doesn't want to be there? Because honestly, right now, I think it should be up to him you know? He should have a choice."

"You think that because you were an orphan forced to grow up when you were three. Henry's a sheltered boy who wanted to break the curse so he could go horseback riding and fight dragons. I'm **allowing** him to stay with you because it seems to do him good."

"Allowing?" She shot Regina a skeptical sideways glance.

"Allowing," she reiterated. "And I think it would be a mistake to give him too much control in this situation. We start treating him like an adult and soon he'll be one. And you and I both know the dangers of growing up too fast."

Something in Emma's jaw tightened and she squeezed the steering wheel again. "So you get him for weekends," she said finally.

"**I'm** the weekend dad?"

"For now. Then, when he's not quite so—"

"Henry?"

"Right—we can switch. Do every other week or something. Let him think he's running the show at least. After everything we've done—" **She'd **done Emma's tone implied— "It's the least we can do."

"Fine."

They continued on in silence. Regina hadn't expected that much give from Emma. Maybe every other weekend—or just every other Saturday. Just like—she laughed.

"What," Emma asked.

"It's like we're divorced parents. Negotiating custody."

"Only less lawyers. And none of the marriage benefits"

"That can change."

Emma blushed and pressed down on the gas. Normally the silence would have been irritating, but Emma hadn't reminded Regina of their cessation of "things." Hadn't reinforced the self-imposed wall between them.

It was a victory.

A small, small victory.

She leaned back in her seat and didn't even bother to wipe the smile from her face.

####

Emma would lie to the face of anyone who asked, but, feet to the fire, when she thought of monks she thought of the little squirrelly guy in Sister Act 2. The group home had had terrible TV reception and you needed someone on the roof holding the antenna and pointing towards the center of town while to other people dance around the tv with foil just to watch anything without snow static. That movie had been one of exactly three they'd had on VHS. Which meant no dancing. They'd watched it until the tape was stripped and even tracking couldn't save it.

It had formed a lot of her opinions of holy orders.

So she'd expected lots of goofy guys in big brown robes and bigger hats, but the monks all wore slim white robes with black cowls and thick sashes. And they all **hated** Regina.

Silently of course.

The curse was broken but most of them retained their vows.

Puck, the **actual** Puck, led the monastery as Blue's proxy. He'd put on weight since the curse and his belly protruded over the chains he wore instead of a sash. He had a friendly smile, and a white blond hereditary tonsure highlighted by his dark skin.

Apparently once upon a time Regina had done something that got him kicked out of a fairy court and wrapped in chains of iron-the ones still around his waist. He seemed to hate Regina most of all. Just, with a smile.

Emma used it to her advantage. When people raged at Regina they also tended to spill a lot of secrets. Between all the threats and insults was all kinds of very informative chatter.

So she learned that the Mother Superior had a morale problem and one of the monks was **very** close to Archie. And she learned all about parties at a moonshine still deeper in the forest with the nuns when the Mother Superior had gone to bed. And she learned about the growing number of missing monks who declared their intent to become hermits and were never seen again.

And that Regina used to have threesomes with Puck and Clarion—whoever the hell that was.

It was irritating that **that's** what stuck out to her and lingered in her head the way back to Storybrooke.

Regina and a couple of good looking fairies doing—"I was an evil queen with a leather fetish," Regina mumbled, like she was **apologizing**. But the leather just made it worse. As did the apology. "Besides she was a queen and he was her most loyal servant and they were quite persuasive."

Emma tried to ignore her.

"And **you're** a loner bounty hunter with a very open mind regarding sexuality. You're honestly telling me you **haven't** had threesomes?"

"Me not having a gender preference has nothing to do with how many partners I sleep with, also, I am not talking about who I have or have not slept with, because unlike **you** I like to keep my underpants business **private**."

"Mine was private until you **dragged** me along to talk to Puck."

"I invited you and you said yes! **You** were the one that knew your ex was going to be there." One of them at least.

"We were really more partners. Like in tennis."

"Tennis partners don't get naked and do things with crops!"

Regina sulked.

Emma sulked.

They made it back to town without either one magically shooting the other out a car window.

That night Emma watched the Disney version of Snow White and tried to enjoy the part where the Queen fell of a cliff. She also ignored the nervous looks and wide berth her family gave her.

Regina having threesomes with hot fairies thirty something years ago shouldn't have bothered her. The woman was her family's archenemy and that was something that was actually **bad**. Her sleeping with some never dressed fairies and going through a leathery bondage sounding phase was the opposite of bad. It was good healthy sexy fun.

What was bad. What was truly atrocious.

Was the jealousy.

Emma was **jealous**.

That seemed worse than all the murder and mayhem in the world.

She spent the next week purposely not asking Regina for help and trying to solve a case that was quickly beginning to look like fairy on fairy homicide.

It managed to get worse when they went to look up the license plate number Aurora had acquired. "Name is Peter Tamlin," David announced. "Lives in Boston."

Only when they found his residence in Google Maps a sinking feelinged developed in Emma's stomach. Because wherever Peter Tamlin lived it wasn't at 1245 Worcester Street. Not unless he was given to living in malls.

"It's a market," Mulan said. "People live in markets."

"Maybe where you're from. But **here** that's a shopping mall and people don't live there."

"So we're screwed," David asked.

"We're screwed."

God, if Leory's Splash theory ended up being right Emma wouldn't have to be worried about being vivisected. She'd kill herself.

With their best lead ruined they returned to walking through the forest looking for missing monks. It was long, mundane, irritating work and it gave Emma way too much time to think.

About Regina.

And how walks through the forest didn't suck quite as much with her around.

####

"I won't do it." Regina crossed her arms to make herself sound more determined.

Aurora sighed. "I'm not asking you. Emma is."

"Then Emma can get off that high and mighty horse she inherited from her parents and ask me herself."

"She's busy."

"I know. Judging me."

"No," bless the princess, she was trying to be patient. "She's out in the woods looking for the stills and the missing hermits."

"Something you can do."

"She thinks you're mad at her."

"She **judged** me."

"I judge you every time you open your mouth and **we're** still talking."

"That's different."

Aurora smirked.

Regina rolled her eyes, "Oh shut up." She turned back around to continue chopping onions. She was working on her knife skills. They'd gotten rusty when she'd been stuck on a boat for nearly three years. Before she never used the mandoline sitting at the bottom of the pantry and now she couldn't even make scalloped potatoes without it.

Aurora came around the kitchen island and leaned on the countertop. "It's not like it's a major request."

She turned around and wagged the knife in Aurora's face, "You're asking me to figure out how someone could pass through a barrier **none** of them should be able to pass through. That's fairly significant."

"Isn't it just…reading books?"

"No," her onion slices were getting too uneven and she pushed them to the edge of the cutting board in disgust. "In order to figure out how they are manipulating the curse I have to understand the curse."

"But you cast it."

"I did a lot of stupid things. It was thirty years ago and I was very upset. I never, technically—"

"Understood the curse?"

She shivered. "The results of it. The curse itself I understood. Far too well."

The knife in her hand suddenly resembled one used long, long ago. She could still remember the slick blood coating her hands.

It clattered loudly on the cutting board and she stepped back. The taste for practicing her skills turning noxious.

"To understand **what** it did I'd have to talk to Rumpelstiltskin and talking to him is at the very top of a very long list of things I don't want to do."

"I didn't want to bury my godmother after she was drowned, but here I am."

Of all the manipulative things Aurora could have said, **that** was the most effective. Because Regina could still see the grief that had added new lines to Aurora's face. And in her head she could still hear her sobs from that night.

"You volunteered to come, didn't you? You knew I'd reject Emma but if **you** asked in the most manipulative way possible I'd agree."

The corners of Aurora's mouth turned up. Just a fraction. "No, you would have done it if she asked too, but I need you to do it because **I** need to find this man. I need to see justice done."

She sighed theatrically and leaned back against the counter. "Very well. I'll speak with him." Aurora started to say thanks and Regina quickly continued, "But be careful. Justice can turn to vengeance at the drop of a hat and they are very different things."

"Worried about my soul? After all these years?"

"I'm rather fond of it sometimes. I'd hate to see it blackened."

"Careful Regina. You keep talking like that and you could wind up hugged. Or worse."

"What's worse than your pitiful attempt at displaying affection?"

Aurora got all moon eyed, "You could find yourself loved."

####

Emma lied about going into the woods again. They'd been at it for days and found nothing but a blind guy with an axe chopping wood. Aurora had suggested they avoid him, "I'm fairly certain he's one of those riddle masters that will kill you if you meet him and don't answer his riddle."

Riddle masters were becoming common enough—with the threats of death at least—that Emma was seriously considered speaking to the town council about having the practice outlawed, or at least regulated to get rid of the potential for murder part.

That afternoon when Aurora said she was going to talk to Regina Emma said she'd go into the woods alone, and then made her way to the hospital instead.

To the cells beneath the hospital to be accurate.

It had been nearly a full week since Merryweather's murder. All Emma had to show for it was an ever expanding mystery, a car that could lick people and a new, awkward component to her relationship with Regina.

Her instincts were telling her the missing monks were the right track to follow. But they hadn't left much of a track. She needed someone who could find them.

And she found Whale in the hall between her and her mission.

Shifty as always.

"Something wrong with the prisoners," she asked.

He glanced at Cora's cell. "They're fine. To what do we owe the pleasure?"

"You know they're not your patients right? They're here because this is the most secure place for them."

"Cora asked me to come."

"Next time miss the message."

He sighed and looked away. "Why are you here sheriff?"

"None of your business, but seeing as you're standing here **I've **got a question for **you**."

He raised an eyebrow and fidgeted.

"Know anything about the monks with the vineyard outside of town?"

"Their early 80s stuff is awful. Tastes a little mildewy."

"I'm thinking about the monks that have gone missing. Monks with anatomy you seemed to know a lot about last time we seriously talked."

"If you're asking if I've ever vivisected a fairy. Yes."

…

That was. Easy?

"In another land. Gold kept me in good supply and I know for a fact your dear friend Regina looked the other way. So if you decided to arrest me for it make sure there's enough room in the cell."

He tried to brush past, and normally, after a shocker like that she might have let him. But his arrogance grated on her **very** frayed nerves and she yanked him to a stop with a tight grip on his arm. "I don't care about what happened over there," she snarled. "I care about here. **My** town. I find out you know anything about those monks you won't need a cell."

His eyebrow arched cooly once more, "A threat sheriff. The mayor's hot headedness is rubbing off."

She leaned in close enough that she could smell the antiseptic on his skin and mint meant to hide the alcohol on his breath. "What to find out what else I picked up from her?"

The way his skin went pasty white said he did not. He jerked his arm out of her hand and rotated both shoulders trying to reclaim some of his pride. "Careful sheriff," he managed to say, "one of these days you and your queen may find out out that threats and proclamations aren't power. And if I'm there you can be sure I'll be helping teach the lesson."

####

Clutching his cane in one hand and dusting the glass countertops in his shop with the other Rumpelstiltskin looked decidedly less impressive than she knew him to be. He looked doddering. Old. **Simple**.

"All out of love potions dearie," he said without looking up.

"I don't need potions to get people to love me."

"Just time travel."

Regina shrugged, "It's helpful."

He tossed the rag on the top of a basket of cleaning materials. "So why **are** you here? I thought you'd be busy trying to woo our noble Sheriff Swan."

"What gave you that idea?"

"Cecily."

God that stupid witch and her fat mouth. "Cecily should be careful what secrets she shares."

"You kissed her in the middle of a forest filled with magic. If you wanted it private you should have done it in your bedroom."

"I would have but that idiot gnome was turning her into a tree."

That earned her a rare look of surprise, "My my, you **do** get up to interesting things in the forest."

"You should try it some time. That girlfriend of yours doesn't strike me as the type to be content spending all her time here and at the library."

"She loves books."

"She also loves traveling. Or did I not abduct her in the Middle Kingdom while she was battling a mythological cat?"

Rumpel glared, "Reminiscing with you is always so entertaining and not the least bit irritating." He spun a funny looking globe on the counter. When it stopped it New York City it seemed to pulsate in a deep red. "Why are you here Regina?"

"I need information."

"I don't know who's killing fairies."

"I have my own suspicions about that. What I need to know is about the curse."

"You cast it." He couldn't stop the gloating smirk.

"And you made it. And hid more than one detail about it from me already."

"And you think I've hidden more."

"I think if anyone in this town knows how to escape the barrier still in place it's the man who created the thing."

He shrugged, "I might know a thing or two…"

"And let me guess. You'll tell me, for a price?"

His eyes briefly flashed gold. He looked like a man, but the imp was still there, vibrating in his skin.

####

Her reason for coming to the hospital was at the end of the row of cells, sitting in a chair with half moon spectacles perched on the end of his nose and the bill of his bright red hat casting most of his face in shadows—everything but the bulbous tip of his nose and that long beard.

"How's the prison life treating you," she asked through the window at the center of the door.

He didn't look up from the book in his lap. Instead he licked a finger and turned the page.

"You're tied to the earth right? So I'm betting sitting in a ten by ten cement cell is making you a little crazy."

His eyes flicked up to the door and then back down to his page.

"What if I could get you released. For a day or two?"

He shut the book firmly. "You've only just put me in here."

"I have, but I need someone who talks to the forest, and you're who I've got."

"Get a princess to do it."

"I've tried. I need someone who," she took a deep breath, "I need someone who talks to trees. You do that. Right?"

"Any particular reason?"

"There are monks, missing in the woods, I need to find them."

He grinned. "The missing monks. The sheriff finally starts catching on."

"You knew?"

"It's a conspiracy."

"So shed some light on it. We'll work on getting you an early release." She didn't mention the man she'd just spoken too. if David the gnome knew anything he'd have to provide it himself.

He sucked in a loud breath through his nose and exhaled through his mouth. "No."

"No?"

"You stuck me in a cell and want me to unmask a massive conspiracy that could easily have me killed for what? A few days in the forest? No."

"You realize this is the only offer right? I walk away and you rot in here. Maybe for years."

"But I'll be alive. I help you and I'm the next fae folk on the murderer's list."

"What do you mean fae?"

"You've got an encyclopedia of magic knowledge at your beck and call Sheriff. Figure it out for yourself."

"He means fairies and their descendants." Cora's voice was filtered by the shuttered door of her cell, but it was clear enough for Emma to shudder at the sound.

All the monsters she'd met, and Cora was the most unnerving. Especially now with a heart.

David sneered at the wall separating him for Cora. "No one asked you."

"She asked for help. I'm merely offering it."

Emma shut the window to David's cell and moved to Cora's. She nodded to the nurse at the end of the hall, who hurried to open it. When she stepped in the stone in the ceiling keeping Cora from using magic touched her with its suffocating affect. Like wearing pants too thick for the weather.

Cora sat primly on her bed, her back ramrod straight and her hair down and perfectly coifed. She didn't see a hairbrush anywhere and wondered how she got it so neat.

"You have something to say?"

"I have many things to say Sheriff." Her mouth stretched into a too still smile, "For a price."

####

"So name it."

Regina had made enough deals with Rumpel to not need to linger on pleasantries. Especially as they were only pleasant for the imp.

"Oh I don't know-" He was playing at being coy, and if they'd been anywhere but **his** shop she would have flexed her magic a bit. "I want a promise from you."

"It doesn't have to do with my first born does it? My family has a history of getting out of that deal. Wouldn't want to renege on you by accident."

It was so delightful to watch his glee turn sour in an instant. Especially the way it made him look less like the Dark One and more like an old pawn shop broker with a limp.

"If one of us leaves the town the other must remain."

"Going on a trip?"

"I leave and you stay. You leave and I stay. Simple as that."

"Why?"

"That'll cost you another deal."

"Fine." She held out her hand. "One of us will always be in town."

The magic in his touch was the only thing colder than Regina's own, but it still made the scar on her hand burn like fire.

####

"You want what?"

"Dinner. With my daughter. And my grandson." She picked at her dress.

"Okay…you know that just because I'm sheriff I can't order citizens around."

"No, but you can let me out for a day on good behavior."

"I-"

"And you can talk to my daughter."

"What makes you think me talking to her would do any good?"

"She saved your mother, the one person in the world she hates more than me, because **you** asked her to."

"I never did."

She tilted her head, "Didn't you?"

####

He set a vial of liquid on the countertop. "The only way to get through the barrier is while holding your dearest possesion after covering it with this."

She looked from the vial and back up to Rumpel's face and didn't hide her incredulity. "Seriously? A potion?"

"I recall you being fond of them."

"I love them." She pointed, "You don't."

"They have their uses from time to time."

"How's it made?"

"Carefully."

Regina couldn't stop her face from screwing up into a very nasty and angry expression.

"Watch it dear. You'll get wrinkles."

"Who," she said through gritted teeth, "has access?"

"Oh well that," he threw the vial up in the air and caught it smoothly, "is something I **can** answer. Me, and only me. No monks, nuns, or murderers."

"So this," she glanced back over at the globe. Closer inspection showed it was imcomplete, the lands fading the further from New York they way. "You are going on a trip."

Vial still clutched in his hand he pointed at her, "And you're staying here."

"The murderer is out there," she gestured with her hands, "I can't catch him if you're roadtripping across America."

"Suppose you can't. Shame. Think he'll knock off another one of those godmothers? Maybe the red one this time."

"You wait a few hundred years to be reunited with your son. Wait a little longer. Let me find this bastard and put him in-"

"I've waited long enough," he sneered. "Now it's your turn to be patient **your majesty**."

"People will die."

"Since when did you care?"

It was like a slap to the face.

That was the problem.

Until that other world. Until Emma and Henry.

She hadn't.

####

"That was…"

"Another time and place. I know. Your feelings may have changed, but I doubt my daughter's has. She's always had trouble," for just an instant Cora Mills looked pained, "Letting go."

"And you think me asking instead of you will help."

"You arrange a dinner. Oversee it yourself if you like. And I will tell you what I know."

"Great bargain, if you actually know anything."

"You want a show of faith?"

"It'd be nice."

"Fae are fairy folk. Ogres, sprites, that sanctimonious blue fairy. Creatures with magic that are not human. The gnome in the other cell is fae."

"You already said all this. Fairies and their descendants."

"Yes fairies and their descendants." Her eyebrows rose as if she was about to be earnest. "They're at war dear. And I think they mean to make Storybrooke their ground zero."

"How-"

The silken smile she'd come to associate with Cora replace what earnest altruism had briefly taken her. Smooth and soft and deadly as a snake. "He talks in his sleep. And I listen."


End file.
